What's Left In Pandora's Box

Sometimes we become so despondent that we cling to the wrong things.  A man sinking in quicksand might reach for a poisonous snake if he thought it could support his weight and help him escape.  Desperate times call for even more desperate measures.   Cliches as long as your arm will come to mind.

In your life, you may find yourself having to open a Pandora’s Box.   You do it, not because of curiosity, but because there is no other way to begin the healing process.   You dread it.   You rationalize keeping it closed.  You bargain with yourself that it will get better without getting worse.   However, in the end, the box gets opened, consciously or subconsciously.  All you can do is let it envelope you and swim against the current to dry land.   The worst part is that you can’t see the shore.  You have no bearing on where it is.   You could unknowingly swim back towards the whirlpool that looks to suck you down into the dark abyss, and almost not realize it.  

Yes, there are days when you want to crawl into that hole, turn on the depressing music, and poke at the scabs on your soul because feeling that pain is better than nothing at all.  And in that hole, you see the one thing left that wasn’t let out of Pandora’s Box.  That’s when the evils in the world look friendly and safe.   Drugs.  Alcohol.  Harming yourself or others.  And there in the darkness is that one thing, above all else, that you could cling to.   Hope.   

But sometimes, we need hope.  Sometimes the pain is too deep and great to simply let it all in.  Sometimes to get through the darkest parts of the process, we need to latch onto a life raft full of needles while we wear a suit of armor made of water balloons.  We could ultimately end up drowning from within, but there is a chance we can survive it and that is better than drowning out in the open.   Hope is something that if handled correctly, could be a lifeline. 

The problem is that you can put too much faith in hope.  Hope is still an evil.   You may hope that you can fix everything and go back to the way it was.  That could very well be, but most likely, it won’t.    Hope can also push you blindly into another direction.  You can put all your faith in hoping for a certain solution and you don’t see that it’s not a solution at all.   When that hope gets dashed, you fall faster and deeper back towards the brink.  You may even go over.

I’m saying you shouldn’t rely on hope.   It can be a powerful thing.  Hope can be a light in the darkness.  It can be a magical sword that slays any and all monsters in your path.  

The one thing to remember is that hope best serves you in limited stretches.   It’s like the star in Super Mario Bros. that makes you invincible, but it’s limited and will run out.   It’s that tire in your trunk.  You put it on, when you have a flat, but you can’t drive fast or take on tough terrain.  You slowly work towards the goal of getting a new tire at a service station down the road.  Don’t abuse hope or put all of your faith in it.  It’s just a temporary fix.   

If treat hope with respect and fairness it will help.  If you use it as a shield, running headlong into danger, it will crack and leave you defenseless.    But, sometimes, in the darkness, it’s the best choice to light the way out.  That is why hope was trapped in the box.  If left open, it would have escaped with all the other evils into the world.  In the box, you can use it when you need it, but you have to put it back or it will escape and betray you.   Never lose hope.

Other people can be your hope, but not your savior.  They can give you hope but you are your own savior.

Religion can be your hope, but without faith in yourself, it’s only temporary.

Trust in you.  Trust in the process.   Trust that hope will carry you to the shore and will then let you lead, never interfering with choosing the right path.  If others are with you, then that’s great.    However, if you are alone, that’s OK, too.  You are all you need to survive.  You and a little hope tucked away.

It's People!

Some puzzling things are afoot…
Facebook is worth more than Walt Disney?
Facebook is a $100 billion dollar company?
What exactly does Facebook make?

I guess I can’t really knock it. I use Facebook more than I should. But, then again, I use it for a variety of reasons. I’m snarky about life. I post shirt designs and promote my business. I get my ass kicked in Words With Friends or spend an inordinate amount of time farming for no reason. I am the reason why Facebook is as big as it is. Though, I don’t feel the need to tell everyone that I am going to gym, going to work, or going to bed.

But in the last couple years, I’ve also become a big critic of Zuckerberg. I don’t blame him for his worth and his genius. This is a guy who built a social networking empire while pretty much being anti-social. Whether he misled the Winklevi about creating the site or screwed Eduardo Saverin out of a share of the company doesn’t matter, what matters is that Facebook, to a lot of people, has become like a limb. Without it, life would be difficult.

Should it be? Are we so self centered in this life that we cannot get through the day without shouting everything to the world in a “look at me moment”? “I’m having a bad day” equals like this, comment and console me, feed my self worth, and basically enable me to be a vapid ass clown. Frankly, I love when I post or share something I like and about 1% of the people in my friends list go and get all militant on me for having an opinion other than theirs. Basically, this is how I am. I snark. I sarcasm. I share shit that makes me laugh. I don’t consider your feelings when I do it… because it’s not YOUR wall. It’s not YOUR Facebook. I once posted a picture that said, “If what I post on Facebook really offends you, then it’s pretty obvious that you do not know me off of Facebook”.

But… I am going off point.

This is about how Facebook has become a tradable commodity. When I asked, “What does Facebook make?” I already had an answer in my head. The product that Facebook makes is us. Our data. Our habits. What we watch, what we like, and what we share is where Facebook produces its greatest marketable good; data. Data that companies pay a hell of a lot of money to get a hold of to market other things to us. GM just pulled their ads because they couldn’t see that their marketing was producing any sales. Where GM screwed up was paying to advertise on Facebook. What they should have done was just buy up data from the users who talk about, post pictures, and like cars. The users advertise for them and they just turn that data into marketing plans for their company…

The tables are going to turn on Zuckerberg. I hope he has a lot of protection over his role and his stake in the company. All the things he said he’d never do won’t be truly up to him, anymore. Paid service to the site. If the board truly wants it. They’ll make him do it. If they want Facebook to green. Hey may have to do it. If they feel he’s not taking the company in the right direction, they could get rid of him. I might be making that out to be bigger of a deal than it really is, but let’s just say, I have some experience in this.

I’ve seen founders of a company get tossed out because the board and, by proxy, the shareholders decided that things needed to change. Things that made them money. Things that may have been totally against what the founder and owner had in mind, but because that company was publically trader they lost their say and their job in the name of money.

Then again, maybe Zucks has it all figured out. Those five things he lays out sounds like a plan to really open up your data to others because, “Hey, that’s what you signed up for and paid no money to use.” But as far as opening up themselves. I have a feeling that sharing that information won’t be as easy. I can imagine that statement to sound like, “There’s patents and proprietary information. We don’t want some other anti-social genius to come up with something better.”

Trust me, something better will come along. In fact, three or four “better” things will come along. Some of them will probably get bought by Facebook. Soon, it will become more profitable for Facebook to buy up the things they want to offer instead of actually producing it themselves.

Unfortunately, for us, the product, until we learn to stop being so damn open with everyone… which let’s face it… it’s annoying, we’ll stop producing for Facebook and then Facebook will stop producing for their shareholders.

Social Blue! It’s People!

GM Execs Way Underpaid According To Man Who Wipes Own Butt With $100 Bills

Oh, Bob. How funny you can be at a time like this. According to Mr. Lutz who is/was/is GM’s Vice Chairman, the top 25 executives at GM are ‘way’ underpaid. Really? Now, I would have expected this kind of announcement to come from the union who represents the factory worker or someone who helps build the cars. However, this comes from the people that ran the company into the ground, flew a private jet to Washington D.C., to beg for government money, and now expects to come out of Chapter 11 with the same perks that helped get them into this mess in the first place.

Lutz talks of talent retention and the ability to keep executives at the company. Well, guess what? Your executives can leave and go work for another company and get six figures. The folks you screwed over may not be able to just say, “Eh, screw it. I’ll go work for another company.”

According to The Consumerist,

GM has hired a new chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, who will be paid in $750,000 plus stock awards. Special adviser Steve Girsky is being paid $1.1 million for sitting on GM's board of directors and for advising Whitacre. His pay includes $200,000 a year as a director and a monthly grant of salary stock valued at $75,000, or $900,000 a year.

Wow, that seems like a real hardship. It’s a wonder you haven’t foreclosed on your homes and been forced to work as a greeter at Walmart. I mean, how do you make ends meet? Want to know a little secret? We’re doing it. Us little jerks who have to budget and scrimp and save and wait for the layoff axe to swing towards us are doing what we can and we’re dealing with it. We are taking advantage of what resources we have to get by and you guys claim you’re underpaid. Do you think you’re owed anything? You built the Aztec! Seems like karmic justice to me.

You know what really burns me on all this is that we continue to bail out these too big to fail companies and they think it’s ok to just keep doing business like nothing happened. Talk about billing it forward. How do you ever expect to be respected as a corporation ever again? Are you guys living in a fantasy? How’s the magic beans there? Because pretty much that’s what you idiots are doing, buying magic beans by continually paying these huge salaries while turning over ownership to the government.

Once upon a time, I could look for an internal job posting and see a job grade attached that posting. However, that went away. You want to know why? Because someone very smart and possibly very evil said, “A job here is about the opportunity, not the pay.” If I worked for GM and said that to an executive, who complained about their pay, I’d be fired. And it’s not even like Lutz said, “Well, they aren’t being paid what they should be according to their talents and responsibilities.” No, he used the words, ‘Way, Way, Way, Underpaid.’ That probably means a comma for every ‘way’ he mentions.

If you are in a position to be a part of the rebuilding of one of the most well known American companies I think you should be compensated accordingly, if, IF, you can produce the turnaround we expect you to. That means, for awhile you may be paid the same as some low level executive for a company out of Cleveland. Then, after all is said and done and you end up walking on water and help the company become profitable, sustainable, and respectable, then I say let’s give you a little something, something for the effort. To think that from day one you are entitled to any HUGE bonus for a company that is emerging from bankruptcy is simply insane. If that’s why you went to work for GM or any other troubled asset recipient company then you should walk into a board meeting and a 30 year veteran assembler should be able to push a button causing you to drop straight into the incinerator.


Dude, the AZTEC!

 
 
 
 
 
 

How ABC Stole Christmas

As a holiday purist, I feel the need to be entertained by the classics this of year. Traditionally, I have found it comforting to engage in YuleTube type cheer. Every year I sit on the edge of my seat hoping that little star can make his way to the top of the Christmas Tree and I tear up as the tree lends a branch to help its celestial friend. I go a wassailing, humming my favorite carol, The "12 Days of Christmas," PA Lottery style. “Five Cash Five!” I sniff and get a warm fuzzy when Peter makes it home for Christmas and makes Folgers coffee for his family.

And as that purist I feel it necessary to indoctrinate my daughter in the ways of winter watching and sat down with her last night to watch my annual favorite, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Now, I own the classic on DVD, along with The Great Pumpkin, but there is something about watching it when it comes on television, complete with commercials. Even though I recorded it and watched it later that night, it’s still holds the same effect.

So, there we are, the happy family, all snuggled up on the blanket spread out on the floor this December 8th, 2009. The lights in the house are all off, except for the tree. As we sit there, we all share in a little bit of eggnog to make the season bright. The opening comes on and I am six years old again. I am the kind of person that will sit and watch, intently. My eyes rarely blink or leave focus from the set. It’s hard to hold a conversation with me during this event and don’t ask me to take out the trash. I am in the zone.

Unfortunately, with parenthood comes inevitable and constant distraction. I have learned to leave the zone to take care of business, should it arise. The cats wrestling under the tree interrupts you or the child spills a bit of eggnog on her pajamas. In any case, even though I have seen the show hundreds of times, I can tell you what will happen next. Even with my distracted state I picked up on something strange. “Hey, how come Charlie Brown didn’t press Violet about not getting a Christmas card?” "Why aren't they eating snowflakes?" “Where was Sally’s letter to Santa, ‘10s and 20s’?” “Did Shermy not get repeatedly cast as a shepherd in every play? And where was the scene where Schroeder bangs out Jingle Bells, on his toy piano, one note at a time to a unconvinced Lucy?”

My wife wondered the same thing, ultimately revealing that she does in fact pay attention and can recall the show even though she thinks I am a dork for continually watching it. I backed up the DVR and reviewed key moments of the show and indeed those scenes were missing. WTF?* (mandatory quota for txt speak reached)

I then checked the wire for news about this atrocity. As I scour the Internet for clues I question the reasons for this meatball surgical approach to a holiday institution. Usually, when something is aired on television you have make exceptions for editing. It’s unavoidable. This is not however acceptable in the case of say G4 airing a butchered version of The Goonies or this particular childhood classic. You do not mess with Charlie Brown. Although, my wife and I both admit that we are somewhat jaded because we cannot help but remember an SNL skit where the TV Funhouse animated shorts lampooned A Charlie Brown Christmas. It was hysterical but has destroyed one of my childhood innocent childhood moments. IMDB highlighted the same discourse I had with the network over the airing. Wikipedia even called out the scenes in question, confirming my assessment of the travesty. What I didn’t realize was that even the tracks were screwed up as Charlie Brown mouths the words, “That’s it!” during the therapy session before the audio cue comes up. One could toss this recognition away at the limited animation quality of the 1965, but us geeks know our shit and we are pissed!

I found out that the reason for this butchering of my childhood was to make room for Disney’s new special Prep and Landing…of course we all know that Disney owns ABC and this was purely a business decision and mockery of that which A Charlie Brown Christmas tries to satirize, commercialism at Christmas. One need look further than the commercials aired throughout the special enticing children to go see Disney’s new animated movie, The Princess and the Frog. Disney is in that pantheon of evil alongside Walmart and other corporate demons. If the sale of NBC goes through, Comcast will join that table of sin and soon the ruination of television will be all but complete.

I feel personally slighted by this attack on my nostalgic memories of days when you could come in from playing in the cold snow, warm up with a cup of hot chocolate, with extra marshmallows, and watch the special. I know that in the past there has been several aired versions of the special, including ones that also mocked the show’s message on commercialism with ad placement by Coca Cola and Dolly Madison along with removing references to commercialism altogether. But in the past few years, I had hoped that we have gained a sense of preservation and have gone back to showing the classic in its entirety. I guess not. I guess ABC will have to forgo my viewership so that I can watch the special as it was intended, on a shiny disc in digital format.

What’s next for ABC? We all know they air The Ten Commandments right before Easter. This usually pisses off my wife who looks forward to watching the 11:00 news at, um 11:00. I don’t know it just seems right to watch it at the same time as it’s called. So, how about airing an edited version in 2010, cutting it down a few hours. Perhaps we can get rid of the more banal commandments like this whole coveting business and calling out God as our Lord. I think it’s and understood relationship. We pretty much know who he is without a formal announcement. This of course will still preempt the news because of the piggybacking of Disney’s new special on ABC, immediately following and called, Jesus Colors An Egg.

Really ABC, was it worth it? Do you feel good about this move? Of course you do. That’s what Christmas is all about. For shame.

One in Ten Addicted To Video Games, Nine Others Just Suck.

I love video games. Have I said this before? I mean I love playing video games. I love driving a kick ass car through cities towards a finish line. I love blasting away zombies and various residents of Liberty City. I love figuring out little puzzles and sliding down pipes into dark worlds looking for coins. But am I addicted to video games? No. Do I play video games more than I should? What’s the standard?

There was a report done by Forbes magazine on how there is a rampant addiction to video games among teenagers. It’s nice to Forbes is stay on top of things. Actually, the study was done by Iowa State University so they are to blame for this. Forbes just waited around to report on it. since video games have been around since the before the 70’s. The point is, whether they are upright and accept coins or sitting in your living room and have a little controller attached, video games are everywhere. They are accessible by young and old and have been for years. They are as prevalent into today’s society as the multiple television home and the nine year old with a cell phone. Now, if you want to talk about addictions, let’s talk about cell phones. I think people abuse texting far more so than video games.

OK, that statement might be a little unfair. Before the proliferation of cell phones among the adolescents of the world in a time, long, long, ago, known as the 80’s. Kids spent copious amounts of time on the telephone chit chatting away with their friends. They’d tie up phone lines for hours causing parents to install a second line for their hooked in teenagers. There is not much difference between the teen spending hours on a phone with the ratty old curled up 16’ cord and the teen running up huge bills over texting and talking on cell phones.

But back to video games. Is there such a thing as video game addiction? Here’s an excerpt from the Forbes article…

“Experts don't agree on whether such a thing as "video game addiction" really exists. At present, it is not listed as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The next update of that manual, which describes criteria for diagnosing various psychiatric disorders, is due out in 2012.”

So, in order to be recognized as a disorder, we have to wait another 3 years? Why don’t they just put a little hourglass at the bottom of the report and have it spin around like the loading screen for a video game? OK, let’s get something straight. While there may not be a disorder called “Video Game Addiction”, there can be an addiction to video games. Just like addictions to other behaviors, video games represent an escapist resource. Bad day at work, run over pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto. What we fail to realize is that it is not the fault of the video game for the addiction. When is the last time we actually blamed alcohol or cigarettes for the addiction? I’m not talking about the companies that manufacture, market, and distribute cigarettes and alcohol. They are partially to blame for enticing people to engage in addictive behaviors However, an inanimate object is not responsible for someone’s inability to show some restraint and enjoy that behavior in moderation. I’m not saying that all behaviors are something you should enjoy, I’m just saying you have free will.

Taking a look at the report done by Iowa State there is a HUGE mistake right in the Abstract.

The current study includes a self-report measure of video game habits completed by 607 8th and 9th graders for hand-held devices, video game consoles, and the computer. A scale of addiction was identified and separated into two groups (Non-Addicted and Addicted). The Addicted group revealed more reports of involvement in physical fights in the last year, more arguments with friends and teachers, higher hostile attribution scores, and lower grades. These results suggest that video game “addiction” is a problem among adolescents, particularly among males, and that addiction is associated with adjustment problems such as school performance and aggressive attitudes and behaviors.

Let’s take video games out of that equation and test those students again, shall we? Let’s test these students based on the behaviors they display and then ask them how much time they spend playing video games. What is going on here is that video games are being blamed for kids with pre-existing behavioral problems. The fact that they play video games is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. If video games were not around, the same results would have been attributed to television, or music, or movies, or comic books. In every generation since the end of World War II, sociologists and psychologists are looking to blame some external factor for bad behavior instead of blaming where the behavior stems from, poor child rearing.

This article comes at an ironic time since April 20, 2009 marks the 10 year anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Somehow, using the word anniversary to denote one of the top five tragedies to ever occur inside the United States is somewhat morbid. I would not even go near the word commemorate. How about observance? That sounds more appropriate. Anyway, 10 years ago, two students, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High School dressed in trench coats and carrying semi-automatic weapons and homemade bombs, much like a scene from The Matrix. They unleashed a hellacious amount of violence on the students and faculty before killing themselves. From then on, the aftermath of psychoanalysis over bullying, media, and social subcultures look for some rationale behind the cause for these two students to enact such a tirade played out on the television and the courts.

Psychiatrists and investigators concluded from journals that Harris was a psychopath and Klebold was depressive, easily swayed and manipulated by Harris into joining his delusions of superiority over their oppressors. These reports have been listed as inconclusive. Were they a part of some Trench Coat Mafia? Did prescription drugs for pre-existing disorders cause Harris’ actions? Was their addiction to gaming responsible for the desensitization moral behavior and the importance of the life of individuals?

I am neither a psychologist or an expert in any field needed to analyze this type of behavior. What I can tell you is that video games are not to blame for their behavior. Violent music or movies are not to blame for their behavior. These things are merely ways for them to indulge and explore an already established predilection of violent or anti-social behavior. Fuel for the fire. For anyone else they merely exist as a recreational outlet. A person can engage in playing violent video games, listening to music with violent undertones, and watch ultra violent movies without any repercussions. Just like a person who is not an alcoholic can go on a night of extensive drinking and then function normally without needing or wanting to drink for any amount of time afterwards. How is this possible? I am one of those people. I love playing games like Doom or Grand Theft Auto. I own or have listened to the same music that other people have claimed as the reason for violent behavior. I've seen "The Exorcist" about 167 times, and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it! You get the point.

Now, to say that this type of stimuli, exposed to the mind of a developing adolescent, can lead to violent behavior is not too far from a true statement. Again, the development of adolescents is something that can be influenced directly based upon the amount of exposure and chemical makeup. The same goes for the ability for some people to burn and some people to tan when exposed to sunlight. Some people just have better skin, just like some people have thicker skin. I was bullied in some ways, growing up? Did I ever want to grab an AK-47 and kill them, metaphorically, perhaps, but it’s nothing I would have ever acted upon in reality. Why? Because my parents gave me a proper upbringing and allowed me to learn what is right and what is wrong based on experiencing both first hand in moderation. By reinforcing that I am totally capable of free will and making bad decisions, those decisions have consequences that directly affect the amount of money I see in an allowance or the tenderness of my ass cheeks at the hands of a wooden spoon.

I’ll give you a better example. My wife is a piano teacher. She has a student that fits into your stereotypical designation of a nerd. He’s lanky, has curly hair, wears glasses, and is a bit awkward, socially. He’s the teenage version of Eddie Deezen. Now, he’s getting no help from his parents. He’s been sheltered and coddled by his parents to an extreme amount. His mother sits just a few feet away from him during his lesson. She asks out loud in front of other people if he needs help with his belt when he’s been in the bathroom for a few seconds more than normal. She walks him hand in hand to their car and has him sit in the back seat while it’s parked in our driveway off the street. The kid is just about ready to start high school and he’s going to be the social equivalent to chum in the shark infested waters of high school bullies. This kid could very well snap out, grab a gun, and climb a clock tower. There’s no moderation in either his exposure to everyday concepts such as success and failure or shielding from harmful stimuli. It’s feast or famine. You either get Karen Carpenter or that guy on Inside Edition being led down the street to his wedding on a parade float that looks like a bed.

Before I go on towards infinity like a game of Tetris, which even that concept has been debated to infinity, I’ll wrap this up. In fact, I’m going to pull a head fake on you. This whole diatribe, while enormously dear to my heart, is in fact a setup for a new design for my CafePress store. So, here you have it.

Video Games Have Destroyed My Life.
Fortunately, I Have Extra Lives!

Where Should We Be

The final part to the series, Good vs. Evil: The Internet.

I had a real tough time trying to come up with this last post. My focus has been scattered and my brain can't process information over a few sentences long. So, you can see how writing an entire blog post about where we should be in terms of the Internet evolution can be a daunting task. In fact, my first stop on the web today was to read an article entitled, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Oddly enough, the writer complains that we, as a society, have neither the discipline nor mental capacity to absorb information if it isn't in little blurbs, yet his article is rather lengthy. Much like my blog posts.

In this case, I totally agree with the author. We are becoming dumber. Actually, let me rephrase that, we're becoming more dependent on the Internet to do everything for us. Google has positioned itself to be the 'perfect' search engine. Its ultimate goal is to predict exactly what you want when you search for something and return that result to the top of the page. That's a lofty goal. In fact, if it ever does succeed 100% of time I think we need to worry. The desire to turn Google into an artificial intelligence is exactly the thing that science fiction has predicted will cause our demise. Look at the Terminator, The Matrix, or I, Robot, movies. The back-story to those films are rooted in the desire for man to give up control of everyday banalities to machines who in turn see us a threat to them or to each other. Machines don't hate or discriminate, but they can calculate probability and foresee possible reactions. In short, they take emotion out of the equation and what's left is the logical ideal that man will decidedly destroy itself. For that, machines will calculate that a person can not logically operate a vehicle without guarantee of bodily harm and therefore, should not drive at all. You are now one step from saying that humanity can not logically exist without harming itself and therefore should not exist at all. Every little computation a computer does it a part of its sum. You can not program logic to deny itself. Sure, you can program random occurrences of illogical actions, but you are still accounting for and inserting that into the programming. Perhaps this is what we refer to as a soul. A computer will never have one and it shouldn't lest it have control over our lives.

I always follow this rule of thumb when dealing with the ideas behind science fiction, if you want ensure conflict of man vs. machine, make the humans blindly look to machines to do the most menial of labor. That's a jumping off point for disaster. It's the equivalent of cutting your nose off to spite your face. Computers are not smarter than humans. That's a little egotistical, I'll admit. However, a human built a computer. A human gave a computer the ability to do calculations. A human told a computer how to do those calculations. In other words, lest a computer be built by God or a supreme being, it's still man made and therefore subject to be no more intelligent than the smartest person. Is it quicker, more efficient, and less likely to make a mistake? Yes, but it is not smarter than a human's potential for intelligence. Yet, as we devise new ways to allow computers to do calculations for us, freeing us for other thoughts, we lose the ability to be the smarter of the two. With the Internet now controlling a lot of our calculations and processes, we have severely crimped our capacity for analytical thought.

The Internet delivers so much information, so quickly, and without interference that we have to become faster at absorbing. Long prose gets scuttled for quick sound bites. Our brain is literally being rewired to accept these changes in thought and viewing, stripping our thought process to the bare minimum. In aviation terms, its been pared down to a flying gas can. We use the internet on a daily basis for information gathering and then we forget it. We don't need to remember what the information is, we know where to look for it. The brain, like a muscle, simply does not get used the way it did and atrophies like the legs of a spinal cord injury patient dependent on a wheel chair for mobility. So, I asked the question, "Where Should We Be?" The answer is "Where We Were." Instead of giving control over to computers with an Internet connection, let's use the Internet to give us better control over our lives and our world.

The Internet and I guess computers in general need to be an improvement on a process, not just do the work for you. Phrases like, "Reinventing the wheel" and "Building a better mousetrap" are terms that state that in order to make something better, you need to identify what is wrong with a process and fix it, leaving what works. In art you get Michelangelo's thought process for David, "It’s simple. I just remove everything that doesn’t look like David.” "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." The same applies here. If the Internet and computers just does the work for us, we are always dependent on them for that process every time. But, if the Internet or computers simply assist us in doing that work, we still have the control and do not lose ourselves. My father-in-law is a retired technician who worked for over 30 years at Westinghouse. 10 years later, he's gone back to work doing the same kind of technical work he did before. The only difference is everything he does involves email. Something he's okay with at home on the computer, but his job uses a different program and he doesn't get it as easily. While, I sometimes tell him that it's not that hard and that it's essential to learn this system, he reminds me that, for 30 years, he did his job without it and the work was finished on time and of quality. There's a human element needed sometimes.

Web design should be clean and simple removing everything that isn't needed. However, where does that 'everything' fit into the Internet? Google. Everything you can think of adding to or piling onto a search engine is done or in the works. When I first looked at the Internet in terms of being good or evil I said, "What would make Google better? Instead of giving me little gadgets and stuff, actually take a concept and improve it." For instance, traffic patterns. Every time I figure out directions for some trip, I always laugh at the estimated time for travel, because I know for a fact that there is construction on a particular road. But guess what? Google has live traffic information on its maps. So, that being said, I really can't think of anything that could make the Internet better.

I can, however, think of several things that the Internet can do to make humanity better. For starters, let's slow it down. I don't mean speed of search or speed of connection. I mean speed of discovery. I can think of several other worthwhile things for the brain trust of this world to be working on instead of making the Internet better. We haven't fixed major issues in this world outside the realm of computers for years. What's the last disease we cured, Polio? Our best and brightest are so busy making televisions larger and computers smaller that they forget that hey people need to use them and can't if they're dead from disease. Maybe, there is a way to take what advancements we've made in communication and electronic design and apply them to realm brick and mortar problems.

Here's my proposal. The top propeller heads at Google work to make it a better search engine. How about use their abilities to make the world a better place. I'm sorry but the Internet is not going to win a Nobel Prize. But the concepts and ideas that help shape the Internet can be applied to engineering in civil settings. We spend so much energy trying to make computers free up time for us yet we are working longer hours and commuting farther in order to do so. Design city infrastructure based on concepts that make the Internet work. We have a device on our "pipeline" that shapes the traffic on our Internet connection, giving importance to business critical functions and leaves poor schmucks like me looking for the sports score to watch an hourglass. Why not figure out a way to plan roads better. Hell, we've got a sandbox right now in the Middle East to test and design theories. I may be speaking in terms of apples and oranges but there has to be a way to look as the Internet and computers as a model for making offline life more efficient. Instead of doing everything we can to use the Internet to waste time, find ways to have the Internet enhance our time.

Classroom texts can be outdated and have no value beyond a second edition or third edition. I still keep a couple of books for reference material but an Internet repository for information and knowledge about school subjects allow educators and students to keep abreast of the most current of ideas and in essence, remove paper from the system. It's Lean and Green. Perhaps government should fund a pilot program where small schools are made paperless. In other words, each student is issued a laptop or Kindle device that accesses a central repository of information in a curriculum. Lessons are assigned through the computers to the students who then complete them and workflow is established to ensure accountability and punctuality. The devices have no internet capabilities outside the classroom without VPN into the closed network of the school and each student is provided a flash card authentication to ensure no tampering. This frees up classroom time for discussion, theorizing, brainstorming. The teacher uses a smart board to put up concepts, teach the lessons, and the smart board then zaps it into the repository for student consumption. Discussion threads spark creativity among classmates and educators and we weed out a lot of minutiae. Students are actively participating as a grade requirement and their tasks assigned by the application keep track of their work towards that goal. You could even branch out globally and connect classrooms from all over the world to learn from each other. There is your beginnings of a global community. I still think that children should learn technical skills alongside analytical skills. Yes, there are people still needed to fix cars and air conditioners but at least give them the training to do both. Let's correct the mistake that our parents paid for when the factories closed down and they had to learn all new skills in computers to gain employment.

Of course, I'm probably way behind on the times and this is already in practice at some school and the world is once again, passing me by like I'm just getting the punch line to a joke from a half an hour ago. But these are just two ideas that hit me while I was in an 'executive meeting' today..... Sooner or later expect there be desktop furniture in the bathroom for people to work on their laptop while they do their business. Why not? We take the Internet wherever we go. Why not take it to the bathroom and enjoy my bullshit along with your own. Just remember to wash your hands...and your keyboard.