Lost and Found

Sometimes, during my lunch break, I like to take a nap on the lawn in front of the church where I work, under the shelter of a truly amazing pine tree. I generally set the alarm on my cell phone and put the phone on my chest to make sure I'll wake up in time to return to work.

Yesterday, I went through this routine. When I awoke and went to check the time, my phone was nowhere to be found. I checked my pockets, looked under the jacket I was using as a pillow, and examined the ground all around me. It was gone.

I was astonished. Had someone taken my phone from me while I slept? No. There was no way.

My co-worker, Leah, returned from the grocery store across the street, and I had her call my phone. She reported that someone had answered and hung up. When we tried again, my phone was off.

Someone had taken my phone from my while I slept. Had plucked it right off my chest. This was beyond belief.

Looking around, we spotted a homeless guy who had been napping on the church lawn earlier. He was now in the process of lying down on the bench across the street. I went over to him and asked if he'd happened to have seen a cell phone lying in the grass. "No, no sir," he replied, shaking his head vigorously. I thanked him and started to walk away.

"You don't think I'd steal from you, do you?" he asked, standing up and following me. I told him I didn't know what had happened--maybe it rolled down the hill or something, but I just couldn't find it. I then introduced myself to him and asked him his name, which he said was Michael, and we shook hands. We chatted for a little bit about my work, his stint in rehab, and our mutual love of taking naps on the front lawn of the church.

"Well," I said finally, "I guess if you happen to see a cell phone lying in the grass.... but I don't think it's here anymore." "Goodbye," he said abruptly, and walked away. Confused, I returned to my office and had my cell phone canceled.

By the way, if your cell phone is lost or stolen, you can put it on a "lost or stolen" list that means nobody can activate it. Cool, huh? Personally, I was more interested in a remote data erase, or perhaps a physical self-destruct mechanism.

Twenty minutes later, Michael dropped by the office and asked if we knew of any shelters he could go to. He was shaking, and was pretty clearly suffering some sort of withdrawal--contextually, I'm guessing alcohol. While I was trying to find one online, he tossed my phone onto my desk. "Hey, you found it!" I said, wanting to give him the opportunity to pass on confessing theft (was this a good move, or was I just insulting his intelligence?). He initially said he found it lying ten feet away from me, but later admitted he'd taken it from me. He apologized repeatedly, and said I looked like a nice person. I assured him that I forgave him and thanked him for bringing it back. "You seem like a nice person, too," I told him. "I really enjoyed talking to you earlier."

He then asked if I had any money, saying he was really hungry. We gave him some snacks from the office, and I caved and gave him the $5 bill that had been making me feel wealthy, pointing him to the delicious pizza at the Whole Foods across the street. He left before we could find him any sort of shelter.

Since he left the snacks at the bottom of the stairs for us to find later, my guess is he didn't spend the money on food. But I'm not convinced a forced detox on the street with nobody there for support would be particularly nonviolent, so I'm okay with it. Besides, if this had gone down differently, he might have ransomed my phone back to me for $20 or something (or tried to, since I didn't have $20).

So I got my phone back, and he got a beer. I call it win-win.

Of one thing I'm fairly certain: If I hadn't shaken his hand and asked him his name, I never would have seen my phone again.

the Web's secret stories

Continuing with TED Talks, yesterday I found what I will not hesitate to say is the most amazing thing I have ever seen on the internet. Artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris gave the above TED Talks presentation in 2007, talking about how he mines data about the human condition from the internet and uses it to create beautiful infographics to show the state of humanity. To me, the coolest of his creations is We Feel Fine, which mines "I feel" statements from tens of thousands of blogs every day, categorizes them, and even assigns photos to them.

At the end of the day, despite all my varied interests, I find that the thing I am most passionate about is the expression of truth. Showing the real human condition in accessible and gripping ways. And this, along with Harris's other projects, is that.

Creating technology that makes us more human

I think I've posted a link to this video before, but my mention of text messaging last night made me think of it again. I do think it's very important that everyone see this, so here it is. This time I was all fancy and embedded it.

The e-mail chronicles

I've always been interested in the ways technology destroys us as social creatures. I think I was in middle school when I pondered whether my generation would be adversely affected in their ability to choose career paths because of our exposure to video games that allowed us to save, load, restart, and create multiple profiles. I am angry when I see people texting one person while hanging out with another, and I feel intense shame when I even read, let alone respond to a text message in someone else's presence. And now I wonder, in this age of text messaging and Facebook, if e-mail has become another victim of changing technology. I read in the New York Times recently that "nobody e-mails anymore."

I think I was in the fifth grade when I sent my first e-mail. I sat down at our Packard Bell 386, used the 36.6k modem to dial the Internet, and opened my parents' @npcc.net (which no longer even exists) e-mail account, and typed a letter to my best friend Jacob. At his parents' e-mail address. The subject was "friendly."

It took me a couple of years to break free of my parents' e-mail account, where my only shot at privacy came from the hope that my dad didn't know how to use the "mark as unread" feature. Still an infant on the world wide web, I was overjoyed to discover that I could have my very own web-based e-mail account: for free! And so I became nmk16@startrekmail.com.

It wasn't long before I realized that free webmail was not reserved for geeks, so I migrated to jedi776@homail.com (clearly I was loathe to part completely with my geekiness). The 776 was because my friend Tyler used the number 67, and I reversed it as an act of challenge.

I used to e-mail with people all the time. Friends, love interests, e-mail e-mail e-mail. But at some point it all stopped. Maybe it was the advent of the Facebook message, which took the whole idea of an e-mail address out of the equation. Or maybe it was just that I got a life and became entranced with this novel idea of spending time with people instead of a computer, to the point that I lost my ability to stay in touch over distances. But I actually don't think it's the latter, because not only do I not write e-mails: I don't get them, either.

Of course, we could be looking at a cause-effect relationship here.

Anyway, I think you should e-mail me.

I'm glad I was never 18

I wrote earlier this year about an infestation of sketchy people at Pirate House. One may argue that Pirate House has a continuous infestation of sketchy people (for example: Micah, Steve and myself), but I maintain that the fact that we didn't know any of them--nor did anyone else--qualified them as sketchy even by our standards.

Well, I'm now facing similar difficulties at Tucker's house.

Along with Ketan, Brandi and me--all Metta interns--a high school graduate named Isabelle has been living in Tucker's large, beautiful house. Isabelle is generally quiet, polite, and out of sight--all things I would consider to be good qualities in a housemate. This is mitigated by her tendancy to leave dishes lying around and occasional streaks of the kind of elitism that could only come from going to some fancy prep school.

With Tucker on vacation for a few weeks, we have the house to ourselves. Or we did, until Isabelle, freshly done with her internship but still staying in Berkeley, began bringing a string of friends to hang around the house. They enhance the dish issue, and in their most famous exploit left a huge mess of pineapple in the kitchen, which Brandi had to sweep off the floor. I mentioned this to them, and they responded by spelling "we're sorry" in pineapple chunks outside my cottage. They even cleaned it up later, sealing it as a truly cute gesture (though Brandi is the one that needed the apology). Then they left some more dishes lying around, which Brandi cleaned up.

Now, if you've ever lived with me, you might be saying, "Whoa, Nick. Are you complaining about dishes?" Fair enough. But I've been very good this summer, and it has been getting on my nerves. But that's just the grating inconvenience.

My personal issues are with the friends' attitude and demeanor. They are loud, crude, pretentious, and I'm pretty sure they drank some of Mark's beer. I heard them talking about Princeton, of which I'm glad, because I came to a realization.

I had just been eyeing a PhD in Liberal Studies at Georgetown University. Now, Georgetown isn't Ivy League, but it's still a very good school, with what I imagine is a similar atmosphere (after all, Bill Clinton went there). But you know what? If these are the kind of kids being funneled into these schools, I want none of it.