Kyle Banerjee's Blog

Last night, I decided to put together my new cordless electric lawnmower. However, my new job has me commuting 3 hours a day, and it was pretty late by the time I was done eating dinner. To give myself a chance to relax, I decided to do the job in the living room while watching a funny movie.

Banerjee boys are known for their inquisitive nature. However, sometimes they don’t totally think things through. For example, when we were growing up, one of us found a shotgun shell in the woods and accidentally detonated it in the house while trying to understand how it was put together. Another caused an explosion (also inside the house) while probing the electrical properties of nichrome. Attempts to build rockets and other flying things powered by gasoline, volatile gases, or gunpowder were instructive, but the results weren’t always pretty. I’m not printing names to protect the guilty.

In this tradition, I decided to learn more about my mower — I was interested in the sort of thing that is never printed in the manual. To make a long story short, I accidentally started it and wound up with a lawnmower running in the middle of the living room. Keiko was very calm about it, but it’s probably just as well that Shirley was out of town.

Lest you think we’re a bunch of nincompoops, Sir Isaac Newton once stuck a needle in his eye so he could explore the effect of pressure on color perception. Luckily, the resulting blindness was only temporary. Comparatively speaking, starting a lawnmower inside the house isn’t that bad……

One thing that I’ve always found strange about living in the information age is how little most of us know about anything. Sure, we get bombarded around the clock about the personal lives of movie stars and ramblings of pundits, but getting useful information is another matter entirely.

Right now, I’m thinking about Google’s nondisclosure agreement. To be offered a job there, you agree that you won’t mention or imply the name of Google, talk about anything that Google does, or use knowledge gained there at future places of employment. Agreements like this are pretty standard, but what bugs me is how many people accept this as normal.

If you can’t talk about what you do and what you know, at best you slow the learning process for those around you. At worst, you do real harm to people who make serious mistakes or cannot solve critical problems because you withheld information. Even if you care nothing about others or aiding progress, you hamstring your career because you might not be able to use your most marketable skill. It’s like learning a foreign language and then not being able to use it.

To get straight to the point, I think that most information is kept secret so those who claim to have an interest in the information can take advantage of others. Many vendors don’t allow libraries to disclose what they pay for products. The only logical explanation is that the customers who are getting ripped off would probably be mad if they found they’re paying much more than other customers. Keeping salaries secret protects the overpaid at the expense of the underpaid. My observation is that the vast majority of the people who hide information from their employers or employees do so with the intention of manipulating the system for their own purposes.

I understand that companies spend a lot of money creating information and that it can’t just be given away. I also understand the need for some information to be secret. However, there is a total lack of balance.

When someone needs to keep everyone else from knowing what they know in order to succeed, it makes me wonder what they really contribute. Withholding service and/or knowledge is not real work, even if the person in question occupies a linchpin position. However, as slaveowners, feudal barons, and others have discovered throughout history, it’s an easy way to live well off someone else.

The library community is always gaga over Google, and as much as I like their products, I think we need to keep an eye on these folks just like we would for anyone else. With about $150 billion in market capitalization as I write this, they effectively have more than $20 for every man, woman, and child on the planet or almost $140 for every internet user.

That’s really a lot for an outfit that makes the bulk of its money from people clicking on advertisements. It takes more than a company motto of “do no evil” to convince me that they’re that different from everyone else — particularly if they won’t let anyone who actually knows anything about them give their honest assessment of what’s actually going on.

Despite the fact that I ride pretty much every chance I get, I always look forward to various organized rides. You get to see a lot of people and cool equipment. You don’t need to worry about traffic or prepare as carefully because the organizers do many things to make the ride safe and convenient. And the routes are always very scenic — much more fun than riding along the side of a noisy highway in the dark.

Last Sunday, Bryan, Terry, and I kicked off the riding season with the Monster Cookie. I had actually been hoping for cold, wet, and rainy weather so that Bryan and I could tool comfortably around in our Velokits while everyone else suffered (we weren’t worried about Terry because he’s used to riding in crummy weather). However, conditions turned out to be perfect, so we took our highracers and Terry took a short wheelbase recumbent.

It was a blast. Terry’s a strong rider and our crazy light and very aerodynamic highracers are some of the fastest bikes you’ll find on the road, so we maintained a very brisk pace. On the way back, Bryan decided to make us regret he’d ridden with us (he actually didn’t feel like riding that day but correctly assumed we’d give him no end of grief if he wussed out) and really poured on the speed. Terry’s bike isn’t quite as fast as Bryan’s or mine, and I had used my legs up earlier when I was riding too hard so he did manage to put us in considerable misery.

But that’s just part of the fun. Only a nut would go on 100 bike ride if he wanted to be in total comfort. Besides, it feels so good when you stop…..