Emanuel's blog

Among the international students studying in Sweden, there are those who would like to pursue a career here as well. And among those, there are the ambitious kind who actually choose to learn Swedish while completing their Master’s degree. I know one of these students.

What do you do, if you’re an international student spending a lazy summer in Sweden? The kind of person described above chooses to take a summer course in Swedish at Folkuniversitetet. Classes are mostly comprised of other students, or people with titles such as M.D., researcher or engineer. My friend studied for a month at Folkuniversitetet, reached level B1+ and can now interact almost fluently in everyday language.

But what do you do when autumn begins and expenses start to pile up? As a monument to everything that’s wrong with Sweden there is SFI — Swedish for immigrants. So, you try it out. After all, Sweden with its massive immigration and language being the key to get to know any culture, should have a well-developed beginner education in Swedish. Here’s what happens instead.

You state (in Swedish) that you’ve been studying Swedish for 6 weeks. They put you in class C (equivalent to an entry-level course at Folkuniversitetet). Classes here are mostly comprised of immigrants from various nations in conflict, illiteracy is common, income is zero and ambition an unknown word.

You try to argument to the people in charge (in Swedish) for the fact that you have already studied this level. –”But you must take this class before you can go to level D.” What if you would insist you already know everything that is taught? –”It’s good to rehearse.” What if you complete a whole course’s material in one study session? –”This is too much for us to correct.” What if you don’t have anything to do, since you’re already 12 chapters ahead of everybody else? –”Here’s 40 pages with basic verb forms.” What if you complete the compendium in an hour?

On and on it goes. Any direct question is merely answered with that smiling silence which only a brain dead shell of a person can muster out.

The extent to which ambition is crushed, encouragement non-existent and one’s intellect insulted is criminal. While there are laws forbidding the exact same treatment towards the less abled people, someone with even a trace of ambition is effectively broken in the silent name of jealousy. Which is almost encouraged by the standards of judgement followed by the ignorant idiots in charge.

Teaching is supposed to be one of the finest professions around. But this is sickening.

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Few situations evoke such interesting characteristics in people as the approach of a difficult decision. People being human, the way one manages the heavy thoughts preceding a defining decision are often quite destructive and treacherous. There’s one of these kinds of thoughts I have encountered far to frequently.

Put shortly, this thought pattern consists of postponing any decision until a perfect mental clarity is obtained. The danger lies in the elusiveness of this clarity – too often it’s nothing else than chasing one’s tail. It is simply not to be found, it’s an illusion. This perfect clarity is yet another manifestation of some sort of inborn laziness in the human nature: it’s easier to blame the inability of decision making on the lack of being certain (“how can I make a good decision if I’m not sure?”) all while giving a simple requirement that is yet to be obtained.

An example of this is the smart person continuously postponing university studies (or any equivalent future defining decision) with the reason that she is “not sure of what I want to do with my life”. So she continues to work at the supermarket or the clothes shop instead, waiting for the mental fog to dissolve. But it never does, does it? I strongly believe that she will never be sure until she tries, makes a decision to go for something and then sees where this new path takes her. The alternative is only an endless loop of uncertainty and waiting.

Another manifestation of this thought pattern is the assumption that physical facts surrounding a person are not supposed to have anything to do with one’s happiness (that would be materialistic, wouldn’t it?). Happiness and prosperity do to a large extent originate from the mind, but the mind in itself is not the exclusive component of happiness. Hard work, creation, productiveness and physical activity can have just as big impact on mental health as thoughts do. Extensive contemplation is just as unbalanced and wrong as any mindless activity.

The harsh truth is probably that perfect certainty is a luxury granted to a lucky few. Instead, the rest of us will never be completely certain, but it sure is better to go for something while figuring out That Big Decision than waiting for a turning point. Any activity, be it the right one or a wrong track, is better than sitting there, thinking, thinking…

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Twice a year me and Fredrik create The Dreamhack Game (DHG), at the Dreamhack computer festival. Earlier this summer we got an email from the Multiplay staff, who arrange UK’s largest LAN parties, inviting us over to create what is now the i-Hunt. Apparently they knew of what we do in Sweden, and liked it enough to fly us over to their own event. Quite cool indeed, and of course we made the most out of it. I’d say my first international “business” trip was a success.

The game is advertised as a “contest of intellect, lateral thinking and logical skill”. No special skills or knowledge are required, only the ability to figure out what to do and how to obtain necessary and relevant information. The tasks usually include elements of code breaking, alternate reality gaming, geocaching, deciphering, treasure hunting and various puzzles. Advanced Google skills are fundamental to solving the game, and so are endurance and thoroughness. Once a problem is solved, you move on to the next level. You usually compete in teams, but you can never know the current position of your competitors. This makes it a competition of intelligence cloaked in mystery and with a touch of psycological warfare.

There were a few tasks we made for this event that I’m a little extra proud of. I’ll explain them here, as they give a very good picture of what The Game is really about. But if the reader feels like giving the game – and these problems in particular – a try, then head over to the i-Hunt website (which will be up until November 09), and register to play. An answer sheet is also available if you get stuck and just want to try the next problem.

Stage 1, problem 5 — The Shameful One

”

An outbound coast
Surrounds or embraces? The city
Hamilton’s (NZ) antipode.

There are two clues here – the haiku poem and the maze image. Both can give the answer on their own, but also in combination with another. The line that is traced through the maze when solved, can be identified by the hunter as the south coast of Spain, and part of Portugal. This is what is referred to in the poem as “An outbound coast”. Furthermore, the location of the square dot indicates “The city, Hamilton’s (NZ) antipode” – which is the city of Córdoba in Spain. An antipode is a complete opposite geographical location, a rare property that Córdoba and Hamilton in New Zealand share. Córdoba is thus the password.

Stage 2, problem 3 — Who’s coming to visit today?

”

Have you been paying attention to the local tv-station?

In this problem, the contestants had to realize that “the local tv-station” referred to the event-specific daily Youtube broadcasts, mainly the Saturday one found here. The careful watcher will notice the announcement of a new sponsor – Tentacle Technology. However, this company is not to be found on the internet, nor did they actually show up at the venue. Instead, if the URL http://tentacletechnology.com was thought of and followed, a really fancy website was found. The password “puppet” could be found if downloading the latest press release.

Smell something fishy here? That’s because me and Fredrik made it all up; in two hours we had set up the company website, got fake sponsorship deals, marketed ourselves, staged a 31 year old corporate history, stolen product descriptions from IBM and even put together a catchy mission statement. This kind of ARG-inspired problem is one of my favourites.

Stage 2, problem 5 — Think inside the box

”

In this last problem, the first realization to make is that the cards are actually not part of some unspecified card game. Instead it’s a sudoku, and when solved the numbers revealed in order are 174143214192. For a hunter, this is immediately identified as the IP address 174.143.214.192, and one of the first things to do with an IP is to HTTP it. When done so, a simple website containing the following image was found:

Again, the experienced contenstant would identified the erect and fallen cans as morse code. When deciphered, the final password was “wey“.

* * *

At Dreamhack we attract ~600 players, and at the i-Hunt we managed to get 200 registered players which should be considered good, since it was the first game in the UK for us. However, it looks like I’ll be going back there soon, as I’ll probably be arranging the i-Hunt three times a year in total – which feels great! I’m looking forward to get to know Britain more, as well as to work with creating and further evolving The Game.

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I spent this last Saturday at the Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, in Humlebæk, Denmark. It has to be one of my favourite places for those one-day excursions, including this time with the very interesting and well-presented current exhibition of “Green Architecture for the Future”. Apart from looking at society’s current sustainability trend with new eyes, I once again started pondering over what art really is, or what it’s supposed to be.

The way I see it, I “understand” art with the help of three axioms. One claims that everything evolves and has to evolve, the second holds as truth that the human eye is naturally attracted to beauty while the last says that humans are not attracted to something similar to what they have seen before. Also I take for granted that there is nothing more beautiful than something “natural”, be it a human face or a landscape.

Taking off from the second axiom of beauty, I believe that the first forms of art all tried to convey something aesthetic. An effort as big as one could amount to was made to create artifacts of beauty: artists strived to encapsulate what the human eye was attracted to.

But when I visited Rome, and saw the perfected works of Michelangelo and Bernini, I realized that “what other offspring of nature is left to depict as perfectly as this?” Somehow it felt as if art – that imitated nature – simply could not be rendered much better than what was achieved back then in the 16th and 17th century. With regard to my first axiom – what were artists supposed to do? Striving a life-time to master techniques already perfected would contradict my last axiom – they would only produce something already seen.

My own theory is thus that the modern art that can be seen today (for example at Louisiana), which ranges from the simplest dots and lines to wierd and unique styles, is the natural next step ahead from when realistic and beautiful art was perfected. New styles that had never been seen had to be invented, new emotions had to be triggered. When yesterday’s art was a contest of talent and beauty, today it’s more about eccentricity and provocation.

The same trend can be observed within digital art. When software and hardware began to allow an artist to be creative in front of the computer screen, the first forms of benchmarks for “great” digital art were realistic depictions of reality. An example is the rise of as-realistic-as-possible special effects in movies. Some years ago this was achieved, and following the same evolution as “real” art the next step was to find a more “unique” style. Here a proper example are the human characters in a Pixar movie. While Pixar could very well create the most realistic humans for their movies, they still choose to make them look “cartoony” in their own sense.

Personally I’m hoping for a renaissance of the talented artist who produce true beauty. While much of the modern art is really cool and impressive, nothing beats a perfect – but unique! – depiction of nature.

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Recently an old friend asked me if I wanted to be rich. “Of course” was my answer. A simple question with – for me – an obvious answer. But judging from the shower of various accusations, the subject of money apparently is more provoking than I thought. Since I couldn’t care less about having money to spend, but I still wish to be rich, I gave it a second thought.

Money is nothing more than a means of measurement. I have an ambition of creating something, be it a company, a product or an idea. And since I want to be a part of the development, from idea to (hopefully) establishment, I probably will want my own company. From here the argument is really simple – if I’m good at what I do, and play my cards right, I will earn relatively much money.

Is my motivation money? Of course not. It couldn’t be. It’s no different than the philosophy of truly great companies. Take Apple as an example. The same thing is also clearly described in Good to Great, by Jim Collins: one of the main reasons for a persistent success is the ability to value what the company creates more than creating stockholder value. It’s a paradox, yes, but one that has to be dealt with.

You seldom create something lastingly great if your primary ambition is money. Instead this occurs when your passion and focus is solely on the creation of a product. If what you create is good, money will follow. Christopher Ahlgren, founder of Spotfire and earning 125 MSEK from the Tibco acquisition, also stressed this fact at a lecture at Chalmers earlier this year. I remember him saying that “it’s a sign that many people like what you created”. He also said something like “Is it fun to get that much money? Hell yeah! But that’s not why I created Spotfire.”

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that there are far more ways to measure if what one works with is great or not. Access to cool technology, for example. Or the ability to travel and meeting many talented people. Or the ability to generate lots of money through innovation. Money is certainly not the only measurement possible.

To me, asking if I want to be rich is thus like asking if I want to contribute with great things. Of course I want to, and I’m going to do my best to fulfill it all.

* * *

One could also say that it’s about survival, in a biological sense. The more wealth you’re able to accumulate, the more fit for survival you are in the modern jungle. It’s the same as the cave man with the most wolf skins – he was better at killing wolves thus climbed the food chain. Also, the cave man probably got more cave girls…

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Everyone should read Atlas Shrugged. You may not fully agree with Ayn Rand’s philosophy (I certainly don’t), but none the less it’s an extremely refreshing read. Among the vast amount of thoughts expressed, anyone will find something to learn. Here’s what I found, and what caused me to think.

By what standard do you let people judge you? What framework of rules determines what rules you follow? Or break? It can be none but your own.

”

Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.

Money and selfishness debunked, mostly. If all you do is first and foremost for your own winning, and the only payment you accept is money, no one will have to second guess your motives. It’s really nothing else than full transparency, in perfect accordance to ones own desires and values. While one probably should retain some level of scepticism here, this belief is what makes Atlas Shrugged so provoking.

”

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.

There is no such thing as “the will of the people”. It’s merely the ruling power’s favourite argument; effective since it cannot be argued against while being disguised with such unselfish words. And remember, unselfishness equals goodness. Or does it?

Happiness through production, achievement and creation. Only the self-made man can be truly happy, and a good day’s work plays a large role in it.

”

Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy–a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer.

“Who am I to know?” is the lowest of thoughts, equal to as if to say “Who am I to live?” Herein lies the essence of the question “Who is John Galt?”

Don’t fear philospophy. All it does is to teach you how to think.

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One could argue, as often happens, that Sweden is a great country. The arguments usually refer to our social welfare model, the lack of poverty and a well developed democracy. But Sweden is not famous for Nobel prizes in science (even though we hand them out), or great academic results, or cutting edge technology, or many other signs of excellence. I’d say that Sweden is very good at a lot of things, but its only greatness lies in not being bad.

A good example is the early education for kids, as I remember it very clearly myself. I was extremely average in primary school, while there were 3-4 students at the lower end of the bell curve, and 1-2 at the upper end. Each of the students struggling to keep up with the rest of the class had extra hours with 1 teacher assigned to each of them, to fully customize the curriculum for their special needs. This is the great thing about Sweden.

However, what was done to fully capture the talent and ambition of the 1-2 students way ahead of the class? Nothing. They were kindly asked to slow down. And really, imagining any other reaction would be impossible in Sweden — the world capital of crab mentality.

Failing to help early talent blossom is at least a crime as big as if not assisting the struggling students. It’s really an analogue for the broken window fallacy in economics – in the short term it’s easy to believe that spending resources on the struggling students will contribute the most to the overall performance of the class. But all it really creates is an equally average mass of disillusioned kids.

As long as talent and ambition is not met with appropriate resources, but instead frown upon with arguments such as “if you’re so good, you’ll manage anyway”, there will be a large number of possibly extraordinary children who will never learn to love a subject, whose ambition will never be satisfied and who will end up just as average as everybody else.

The elimination of all things bad is not a sign of greatness. Only of ugly mediocrity.

* * *

The term “struggling student” is really not very accurate, since top achieving students struggle too. At least as much. I didn’t find a better term.

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The hardest of all questions dealing with my future has to do with what I actually want to work with. I see two aspects to this question that I have to straighten out before I can fully invest in my plans for the future. One deals with the kind of work I want to do (alternatives revolving around R&D or management or consulancy), and the second deals with what kind of organization I want to work for. While I haven’t figured out much on the first aspect, I have identified 4 different kinds of organizations that I truly can see myself working for.

A consulting firm
Being currently employed as a consultant, I really do like my work. I certainly would not mind to further pursue a career in this field, with my main objectives being to effectively gain experience of many segments of the market and it’s players (because no, you don’t work nine-to-five as a consultant). I believe it would be the perfect starting-point for possible future start-ups of my own, with a good contact’s network to aid me.

Despite Software Engineering being my major right now, I’m quite interested in the management consulting field. Through my work I’ve met many Accenture people, I know a few people working for McKinsey and Triathlon (based in Gothenburg) are quite cool indeed. But one doubt remains – what do consultants actually know, despite PowerPoint skills and business-speak?

A large but awesome company
I have allergy against large corporations. As Tom Peters puts it: “big stinks (mostly)”. I’m afraid the caricature picture I have, containing fancy nonsense titles, complete incompetence and yesterday’s ideas, is mostly true.

But! There are a few truly awesome companies that could be regarded as large, but still cool. I would take a job at any of these, hands down, if only to have the opportunity to work with the fantastic people there that create the magic: Pixar, Apple and Google. Seriously, I could be their janitor.

A smaller and hyper-creative company
This category contains all those mostly unknown but technology-intensive companies. I discover one every day, and their key characteristics are re-thinking of what a company should be like, mixed with an overdose of creativity. It’s basically the large and awesome companies mentioned above, but in their cradle. It’s everything from start-ups writing business plans, to 5 year old underdogs.

My own company
This is by far the most attractive alternative right now. What greater pride than owning, running and making your money all on your own? While contributing to society with something new, useful and beautiful? This kind of organization is by far the most challenging, and central to it is a brilliant idea. I don’t have this idea yet. But once I have it, World Domination Inc. will soon be well known.

I have considered starting Yet Another Software Company, but unless I figure out how to give it a unique characteristic I won’t do it. Mediocrity is not enough. There are enough firms doing websites and CMSs. I want to build something new – take an idea and shape it into a product. Note that building something not new but radically better, also falls under this category. That “radically better”-part is what’s “new”, think cellphone-to-iPhone.

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All 4 alternatives are quite hard to achieve, and that’s completely the purpose. The beauty of the career game is that I control myself. If I don’t get hired by (for example) Pixar, no one else than myself can be blamed. Aiming and trying is a victory. And that’s what makes it all the more fun – to see how far I can go.

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There seems to be a growing opinion that university is a waste, some even claiming that it might be the next bubble to burst. While any institution should be critisized, the arguments against higher education seem to have missed what it’s all about. The university is and should only be a forum and a filter.

University is not hard, not unless you study something you don’t like. The only people I have met that fail subjects do so because they don’t spend the time required. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can obtain a diploma if they want to. And that’s exactly what I mean by filter – university filters out the ones that have some ambition and some will to put in some effort.

The one thing that no other medium can offer, but a university can – and should – is a forum. While I could self-teach me an equivalent amount of knowledge to my education through Wikipedia, the Internet could never offer me the chance to meet like-minded and ambitious students and competent professors. It’s the whole networking-thing that I love the most. It’s invaluable, and utterly difficult to achieve in any other way.

Some of the upcoming rockstar industrialists go to the same school as me. Period.

But a good forum is very difficult to achieve. It’s probably more of a utopia than a present fact. The main reason, I believe, is professors that are damn good at their subject but lack anything that can be related to pedagogy. Also Chalmers’ (incredibly stupid) policy of hiring professors with an impressive academic curriculum shuts out the people with extensive industry experience, with real, tangible and valuable knowledge. I believe that more of the industry perspective would add much quality and balance to education. Bottom line is, let passionate people in and blackboard-staring researchers out. Engage in debates and discussion rather than PowerPoint slides, and a fantastic forum will occur.

If there’s a bubble to burst, it better create action against the confined, nose-in-the-book culture in favour of a forum for people who by any means possible want to push development forward. Academics were born to serve the industry, and it should remain there.

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As an engineer-in-progress it’s easy to observe some new technology and think “wow, this has great potential!”. The technological factors are overwhelming, so much that all other factors for success are disregarded as “details” to be solved along the way. Especially economic ones.

My favourite example is the moon. Certainly we could build a habitable station on the moon. If we can, and the technology is pioneering and awesome – then certainly we should! Right?

Enter the killjoys. The ones asking “and then what?”, “with what money?” and “why?”. I believe, to be successful as an engineer and entrepreneur I have to accept them as relevant. I must even be able to give answers – good and convincing answers. In other words, I must endulge myself in the languages of economics and marketing. Technology is not only about technology. Maybe even the least.

Examples are the thousands of shiny new webapps, services and communities sprouting the web. I dare say most of them are build before a functioning business model is figured out. “Users = money” has been proven not applicable, mainly due to the lack of money within advertising. Facebook, Twitter and many other services simply are not profitable. Why invest and build something, if not for profit?

Perhaps the starch truth is that for the vast majority the web can merely function as a complement – an accelerator – for the company’s core business. Just as The New York Times is now implementing paid online news, most of the other free services will have to actually start …selling something. Crazy I know – selling something to be profitable?!

But as a tech enthusiast, I sincerely hope that functional business models will emerge so that all those webapps remain free. Technology on its own is pretty awesome.

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