Lisp, Satan, and the Americans with Disabilities Act

Or how a big blue button demonstrates that data is code and code is data.

I was walking to my office at work the other day when I overheard two students discussing the big blue "ADA assistance" button at the bottom of the stairwell I was passing at that moment. The button is important because the building I work in is an old one - decrepit and historically important at the same time - so accessibility is an unresolved issue. To make a long story short, the building cannot be torn down because it is old and decrepit, but it is decrepit and without improvements (such as elevators for those who cannot easily climb stairs) because it is not considered "worth" the effort to fix and/or modify. Yet, important services such as the issuance of university ID cards and financial aid are located in this old building where any department is at least a half-flight of stairs away, forcing nearly every student to trudge through its antiquated labyrinth.

Thus the need for the big blue button. When someone who cannot ascend or descend stairs alone arrives, they push the "ADA" button and help is on the way. Let's just skip the more obvious problems with this process and get to the one of note for this discussion: in order to press the button, one must be an "ADA". Here is where the discussion started, since one of the young ladies mentioned was attempting to determine whether she needed to press that shiny blue button - what was an ADA and whether this was merely some sort of doorbell or yet another quirk of the stepped-up national security. You see, she didn't really get what an ADA was because there isn't really such a notion as "being" an ADA, unless one is considering an anthropomorphized view of a legislative act. There is something more here: to arrive at her quandary one must (at some level) define someone's needs, if not their identity, through the legislation forged to assist them. Ponder that one. Her issue, in particular, was that she was unable to resolve the situation: here was a button for certain services that she required, but to push it one must be an ADA. She was more than likely familiar with the ADA (at least in a general sense), but was obviously confused as to whether this notice referred to THAT ADA, or some other ADA more descriptive of her condition. It seems that the sign could have simply read, "If you are in need of assistance," since I doubt that the person who arrives to help the button-pusher checks to see whether the ADA applies to the individual before proceeding. And here is a clear example of someone who required assistance, if not for the reasons outlined in the ADA. Hmmm. Somewhere in there we nearly tangled up our nouns and our verbs, our data and its execution. Fortunately, we simply transposed our nouns, providing a separate CDR for our CAR (in Lisp-speak) but following the same model.


Somewhere along the way in the past few days, I found myself describing a novel I read years ago, Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S.. Jeremy Leven must have encountered a biography of the computing pioneer, John Von Neumann, since his character Leo Szlyck bears some slight resemblance. Perhaps it is coincidence, but when Leo sees railway signs transform into the circuit diagrams used to construct a computer - and ultimately "reconstruct" Satan - I was reminded of the stories of Von Neumann's meditations. Read the book, it will bend your mind a bit. Anyway, here the (to totally destroy a reading of McLuhan) medium is the message - or maybe just the transport. It is through the careful manipulation of structures (largely, influencing Szlych) that Satan is able to re-emerge, and through these same structures he is able to manipulate Dr. Kassler (J.S.P.S., or just some poor soul). Thought becomes substance, and substance becomes thought - but isn't that the same as saying code is data, data is code? Moreover, what is Satan at this point (in the novel)? Is he alive, is he thought, is he code? While Leven leans the reader in a certain direction (in that Satan isn't bounded by the confines of the machine), there is a heavy reliance upon slippery (loosely typed) nouns. Satan is in fact manifested (in one form) through the physical circuits, but also through various events (or functions, at least through implication).


So what do these things have in common? Lisp. Well, not Lisp necessarily, or even directly, but there is a notion behind s-expressions (the core concept of Lisp) that drives the hideous aspects of the ADA button and Leo Szlyck's creation alike. That notion is that code is data. That notion is that data is code. One of the tricks to understanding Lisp (if not life) is leveraging the slippery nature of things/objects/atoms/however-you-wish-to-discern-the-common-mote. Lisp is one of many programming languages that takes advantage of the fact that functions can become data and vice-versa. Yet our everyday, natural languages allow this sort of usage all the time. Some languages are more forgiving than others, and perhaps (depending upon one's acceptance of Sapir-Whorf) our mental constructs as well, but it seems that Lisp is more natural-language like in (at least) this respect.


So what of blue buttons and Satan(s) (after all, there is still a Microsoft AND automated check-out at Wal-Mart)? Can they be explained as a failure to understand the transitive implications of the s-expression? Probably not. In both cases (the girl pondering the ADA button and Kassler battling Satan), the main issue is an inability to recognize something outside of its familiar (internal and self-constructed) cage. Nonetheless, I think that the sexp (s-expression) is an interesting way to consider these little quirks. And while the sexp doesn't necessarily mean data is code and vice-versa, it does allow such a broad treatment of both events and things.

Internet quizzes

I just took another of those infamous political polls. I guess that the purpose of these time-killers is to allow the average Joe to figure out where they stand politically, but I really wonder whether there is there a reason why people are not able to figure this out without the aid of an internet form?

One issue that stikes me is that these surveys never have the really interesting questions. I would prefer something far more "edgy". For example:

a) Scotch or bourbon?
b) If you only had one computer, would it be a laptop or a desktop?
c) You are stranded on a desert island with only one video to watch: Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh?
d) You are abducted by aliens. Do you ask for answers regarding who killed J.F.K. or the infamous probe?

Speaking of alien probes, I just took the "geek test" at innergeek. Talk about slanted questions. Needless to say, I scored in the "Super geek" range (despite never having bitten the head off a chicken) with a (rounded) 49%.

Really, I wonder about our need to conform to some group, some pre-conceived notion of who we "are" in the chest-pounding, visceral sense of self-assuredness. Yet, it seems that there is no assurance; that we should hope that our personas are as dynamic as the we hope to be, adapting to the present need yet always ourselves. However, I suspect that most of the participants in your average internet survey are people just playing their hand, seeing if they are perceived in the same terms applied by the self. That is, most people really don't care what the form says, they are simply applying a sort of Turing test to the 'net in an attempt to see if the "machine" is as smart as he or she is, without any serious intent.

You wonder whether this need to conform has always been evidenced in mechanisms such as surveys. Would Sven the Viking been more self assured had he taken the Metrosexual quiz? Perhaps Casanova should have taken a quiz on sexual addiction.

So are these quizzes merely entertainment, or is there a greater social value? Are we, as a society, cautiously broaching those difficult questions about ourselves, our ethics, norms, and morés? Or are they really just a bunch of pop culture artifacts posing as lightweight sociology and psychology? After all, there are no control groups, no discussion of method, and only the simplest of statistics: a ranking on a range, as if you were attempting to ring the bell with a sledgehammer at the carnival. Maybe there is some quiz I can take in order to find out these answers.

What's wrong with self-checkout

In today's hectic world, it often seems that direct human-to-human interaction is in grave danger. We speak to each other through email, over phones (cell or otherwise), etc., but it seems increasingly rare that we strike up a trivial conversation with our neighbor and hear another perspective on life's events. Yet one place where this chit-chat still occurs is the grocery check-out line. When my wife and I go shopping, it is a rare thing when the the clerk is not engaged in friendly conversation with my wife, often informing us of interesting or important tid-bits of information: there is a sale tomorrow on cookware, he or she is friends with my next-door neighbor, etc. And while I am not a great conversationalist and seldom engage in these conversations, I nonetheless enjoy them and (possibly for this reason) always seek out a chatty-looking clerk when I am shopping alone.

About a year ago, our local monopolistic house of cheap imported goods installed a number of self-checkout lines. I have used them once or twice, usually out of necessity, and truly abhor the experience. Yet, at some level it strikes me as odd that a geeky fellow such as myself would have an aversion to what is arguably a neat toy. Why do I dislike automated checkout? Obviously, the shopper is doing all of the work, but that shouldn't be a problem; after all, I am quite willing to load and unload my own cart, go through the rituals required to run my debit card, (sometimes) bag my goods and load them into the cart, transfer the bags into my vehicle, put the cart away, unload the bags from my vehicle, and put the goods in their proper locations in my home. Ringing the goods up on a register is really a trivial component to this process.

So if it isn't the work, is it the lack of conversation such as I mentioned above? After all, the cartoon-ish graphics on the LCD screen don't really connote "chatty", even if there is "conversation" at some level taking place. The interaction could be far friendlier, perhaps even eventually using a robot such as ASIMO or Repliee Q1Expo. Yet, there are two problems here: 1) we interact with other humans quite happily in far more restrictive conditions - a Russian ham-radio operator conversing with an American one using Morse code, for example, and 2) conversation with a human clerk is possible, but does not always occur. I suspect, however, that this lack of potential conversation is a factor in my aversion.

One aspect of the conversation that does occur, and that is perhaps the leading cause of my aversion, is the nature of the relationship between human and computer in these self-checkout lanes. Here we have the culmination of decades of technological research embodied in an appliance; these machines are not very intelligent and do not operate well outside of pre-determined limits. Those limits are tightly coupled to the perceived (by the designers) shopping process: take an item, scan it, put it in the bag. After so many items are placed in a bag (by weight), remove the bag and begin loading a new bag. Once you have scanned all items, pay, receive your change (if any) and receipt. Then begin the loop again. A very simple process that is about as efficient as a single chicken plowing a field. Moreover, the process works well in an automated environment, but humans are not "automatic". We don't always want to put that soda we just purchased into a bag, nor do we want to mix certain items. And these automated lines aren't very fault-tolerant: once an exception occurs, it usually winds up requiring the assistance of a human pseudo-clerk whose job consists of watching a half dozen machines to make sure that self-checkout proceeds smoothly.

All of the above are problems with the human-computer relationship, but the most grevious issue (in my mind) is that the computer is in charge. Each step of the way, some appliance with a horrible user interface dictates the shopper's next step, in, basically, an inversion of most human-computer interactions, at least as far as they are intended to work. Worse yet is that in typical human-computer interactions, the human is attempting to leverage some quality of the machine (fast processing, large amounts of data, etc.), yet in the self-checkout lane, the computer (easily the "dumber" of the two in its stripped-down appliance form) doesn't leverage the intelligence of the user at all.

In fact, human intelligence is probably one of the leading causes of "exceptions" as we attempt to optimize our shopping, ordering items on the conveyor belt, etc. We all have our personal quirks about us. Perhaps you order our cart into categories by weight, type, or even price. Perhaps you put items about which you have a question - price, quality, etc. - into the top basket of the cart. Maybe you make every effort to minimize your impact on the environment and bring your own bag(s). Maybe you like to have everything double-bagged, with an even number of items in every bag. However, the computer doesn't account for these variations. I assume that the companies that develop the checkout software see these variations as too difficult to account for. I would also suspect that a number of developers would welcome the challenge. Instead, however, the software adheres to a market-driven conformity: no bells or whistles, out the door fast, and little need for user training. Unfortunately, then, it seems that to use the self-checkout (a misnomer, since it is really a computer in charge) is to deny our own personal way of shopping and submit to an alien sense of conformity.

So I always make an effort to find a human clerk when I an checking out. Perhaps I will find out about the classes she is taking, his hometown, her engagement, his new dog, etc. Perhaps we will sit there in a cold silence heated only by the fact that we are two humans interacting. Regardless, we will both retain some semblance of our individuality through the process.