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The Spirit of Buying Between the last post and this one I heard a marvelous jazz piece on KCLU/88.3 in Thousand Oaks, which I often listen to at home over its 4-watt translator in Santa Barbara on 102.3. It's a great little station out of California Luthean University that does a nice job of mixing NPR news features and jazz. Anway, they're having a fund drive, and even though I said a couple days ago here that I don't like to give in to appeals (the way I see it, I'm purchasing the station's services, not just offering my "support"), I did want to express my appreciation — along with my money — to somebody else in the station's market who likes the station enough to volunteer at the phones. It's not an old world market exactly, but it'll have to do. So I called and spoke to a friendly volunteer who liked my story: that I was new to the region, and calling in from a shuttle bus en route to Snata Barbara from New York by way of Los Angles. She asked which I liked best, the NPR programs, or the jazz. I said both, which is true. But I miss having a full-time noncommerical public station. I was spoiled by KQED and KALW when I lived in the Bay Area. And I wish I could get L.A.'s KPCC up here; but unlike the other L.A. stations that radiate from Mt. Wilson, it's only 600 watts (the others up there range up to KPFK's 110,000 watts), and if you can't see the transmitter, you're not getting the signal. So the only reliable NPR-type radio signals in Santa Barbara are KCLU's 4-watter and KCBX out of San Louis Obisbo, which is translated through a 9-watt signal on 89.9. KCBX is a mix of classical and NPR-type programming. L.A.'s KCRW, which is easily the most vibrant public station in the country, runs a mix of music and informational programs, and gets a weak signal into Santa Barbara through KCRU/89.1, which radiates with 250 watts from a mountain near Oxnard. UC-Santa Barbara has KCSB/91.9, a mostly-music student station that transmits from high on Santa Ynez range, but with just 59 watts. It disappears in the hills near downtown. There's an outstanding commercial classical station, KDB/93.7, with a 12,500 watt signal, right in town. The University of Southern California has KFAC, another classical station (using the call letters of the longtime commercial classical AM/FM in L.A.) at 88.7, with a signal that's a twin of KDB. KFAC repeats the signal of KUSC/91.5 out of Los Angeles. I kinda wish they'd turn it loose and let some locals program it as a public station with information programming, but doubt that would happen. Anway, nearly all of them broadcast on the Net, which is cool, but kinda hard to hear in the car. The KCLU volunteer asked if the station could mention me and my story on the air. I said sure. Now, as I listen in the bus, the signal has vanished. Not much FM gets to Highway 101 along the coast heading up toward Carpinteria. Ah well. Looking forward to playing with Jeffrey on the beach in an hour or two. Beats anything on the radio. Fasting from speed I'm writing this on the Santa Barbara Airbus, which picked me up a few minutes ago but is still circling around the innards of LAX, picking up passengers at the other terminals. I think by now we've visited most of them twice. Anyway, if all goes well I'll be home by 3:30, so I can take Jeffrey swimming. In my ears, the tongs of a Walkman headset are playing KPFK, where The Aware Show's Lisa Garr is conducting a remarkable interview with Robert Kamm, author of The Superman Syndrome. A few moments ago Kamm said "we can live deep or live fast, but not both." This speaks to me. Moving to Santa Barbara was in part a choice to live deeper, to leave work at work and enjoy faimily life at home, on the beach, in our new town. What Kamm's talking about seems like obvious stuff, but there is interesting scholarship behind it. Kamm traces our obsession with work to a "rapacity" that is one of the less savory qualities of our cultural forebears, who explored and developed the American frontiers (both North and South) and manifests today in "corporate warriors" He also compares our ideal workers and leaders as "supermen" on the model of the cartoon character, who has a contract to do good but no inner life at all, in spite of his manifest goodness. The Superman ideal is built for speed, not depth. Makes me wonder: is there such a thing as deep work. The business world I hear Kamm talking about is still mostly an industrial one. What we need first is for business leaders and elected officials to start getting introspective and cultivate an inner life, he says. He maintains the old pro-labor, liberal, good Democrat's view of business. I'm not saying that's a bad view, just a bit antique. Many of today's leaders are Malcolm Gladwell's "mavens" and "connectors." And Seth Godin's hyperviral "sneezers." Let's remember that work is what replaced craft after Incustry won the Industrial Revolution and workers with occupations became replaceable parts in corporate factories, mines, office buildings and org charts. That corporate culture is still with us, but today's corporations don't have nearly the same power. Employment for most of workers through most of the Industrial Age was a faustian bargain. In many cases it still is. But fewer all the time. We have much more choice. And the demand side has much more influence. In many of today's market categories — cerrtainly all those informed by the Web — supply and demand are on an equal footing. Customers not only have more choices and better information, but so do employees. Job titles are increasingly less gear-like and more meaningless. There are also companies organized not around work, but around craft. I submit that this is exactly what we have with companies that work mostly with code. We don't manufacture our code so much as architect, design, create, build, author and write it. We don't choose those words accidentally. Kamm's advice is no less valid for these companies and occupations. But the idea of deep workdoes seem like it belongs in his conversation. And maybe it's already there and I'm missing it, having heard only a few minutes of the guy. I see he lives in San Luis Obisbo, right up 101 from Santa Barbara. Might be interesting to get in touch.
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