I saw familiar strangers in my dream tonight. This twilight of half-reality was just real enough to awaken memories of fifteen years ago. It was a reunion. The faces that came to me were not real. They were older versions of people that never were. They spoke English. We walked through rooms that never existed, we shook hands. The reality of that dream haunts me, and the detail is clear even after it’s gone. August 1997. A feeling of failure. That nagging consciousness of people around me being more determined and hard-working. People with ‘style in their character’. I saw a glimpse of something I would be struggling with for decades — I am now sure of it. In the dream I felt vindicated because I had ‘made it’ elsewhere despite not making it there with them. These imaginary people just don’t know how small a pond I have been swimming in since we parted.
Laziness and fear keep the Orwellian Prole in me alive. This detestable lack of self-discipline: there are books out there today that explain it away and keep the herd of animals pacified. It’s high time I broke these chains.
TED Talks have become too congested with trivial and sometimes questionable stuff. EDGE.ORG remains pure awesomeness and keeps getting better. Therein may lie a lesson. Is the Edge’s quality of content a result of it being carefully curated, as opposed to a massive waterfall of information from mostly lesser thinkers that TED represents? Do the organizations target different audiences?
Can we apply a similar comparison to the fundamental distinctions of Open Source vs. Apple/Microsoft models? Open Source software is infinitely more flexible, diverse and ultimately more useful to the knowledgeable user. Corporate products, on the other hand, are designed more purposefully, tested better and are generally more appealing to the ‘end user’. No right or wrong here – both approaches have their place.
> I am becoming increasingly convinced (by Nietzsche and later Jung) that big problems cannot be efficiently resolved but only “outgrown”. All this noise about fossil fuels cannot be addressed directly by developing “alternative” sources of energy but only in combination with hugely disruptive technologies like the Kindle. The necessity to ship bricks of paper around the world is eliminated with one huge swipe. Combined with other innovations, like BitTorrent, the Kindle makes vast intellectual resources available to anyone interested — entire libraries of literature– free and completely portable. This device (and others like it) can help us outgrow important ecological, educational and energy issues better than all of legislation designed to address said problems combined.
