Ged Carroll

Category: quality | 質量 | 품질 | 品質

I started my career working in laboratories measuring the particular attributes of a product. The focus was consistency and ensuring that the product fell into a certain range of measurements. But this focus was around  consistency and fitness for purpose. When I got to read Robert M Pirsig’s Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance quality took on a difference aspect.

According to Pirsig quality, or value, as he called it, cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual construction of it. It exists always as a perceptual experience before it is ever thought of descriptively or academically.

Pirsig drew on his knowledge of western and eastern philosophy to try and define it by understanding its metaphysics. Inspired by the Tao, Pirsig proposes that value is the fundamental force in the universe. That it stimulates everything from atoms to animals to evolve and incorporate ever greater levels of quality.

He broke it down into two  forms: static and dynamic quality. Quality is one, but it manifests itself in different ways.

So went much of the conversations that I had with my housemate and landlord Ian during my last year in university.  I started my appreciation of quality through the influence of my father who was an engineer by both trade and inclination. Pirsig’s work tapped deep into my belief system and lodged there ever since. This was why you have this section of my site. Sometimes things grab me with regards to quality.

This gives an apparently random aspect to this category, but it isn’t really random at all.

  • Siberian meteor burst + more

    Siberian meteor burst

    I know that there have been 500 people with minor injuries, but  the Siberian meteor burst felt like I was living in a Jerry Bruckheimer film. The best observation I saw about it was in Vice magazine’s email newsletter which asked why so many drivers in Russia had managed to film the asteroid rather than keeping both hands on the wheel? The reason for the multiple recordings of the Siberian meteor burst is driver cams used to help with car accident disputes. The Siberian meteor burst brought back memories of the Tunguska event in 1908 which levelled large swathes of Siberian forest.

    Business

    “Physically Together”: Here’s the Internal YHOO No-Work-From-Home Memo | AllThingsD – I could see a post coming on from Becky McMichael about the benefits of remote working and flexible hours etc etc

    PrivCo | LIVINGSOCIAL $110M Debt Infusion From Existing Investors With Oppressive Terms – I wonder what implications this will have for GroupOn

    Consumer behaviour

    HBO: The Weight of the Nation interesting site on obesity in the US

    Culture

    So there has been extensive character redesigns and different actors will be voicing some of the main protagonists, but I am super-excited that Production I.G are returning with another installment in the Ghost In the Shell series of anime. Arise looks amazing judging by the trailer footage now available on YouTube. More Japan related content can be found here.