Peters Email
From The Vision Thing
This e-mail was received privately by an old friend of mine, Pete. Pete has had what many would consider a troubled few years, but I think it comes across that he's got some interesting thoughts to play with in this sandpit. I asked for permission to post it, it was granted, and so it's here:
[edit] Pete's Email
Sorry begin with something from Babylon 5, especially as I'm actually a Vorlon, but:
what do you want?
seriously,
what do YOU want?
and again,
what do you WANT?
I tell you want I want, I want to be able to pickup the thread of something without having to spend an age trying to understand how the hell to make it work for me.
There's the plethora of helpful tools that I simply can't be bothered figuring out how to integrate into my life. You've got a whole plethora of stuff tagged onto the end of your blog: "Save to del.icio.us (1 save) • Digg This! • Share on Facebook • Discuss on Newsvine • Stumble It! • Submit to Reddit • Furl This" WTF?
Take Facebook, you've obviously spent far too much time figuring out how to get all the little widgets work for you. I can't be bothered. Besides, Facebook is depressing, I look at how few friends I've got and think I'm a sad looser. Then I wonder if it's just because I'm just not willing to invest the time. Then I realize if if it's time I want to waste I'd prefer to play EVE; fly around in my nifty little Interceptor, wasting pirates, developing my skillz, learning to be a better pilot and to make my guns more effective.
I've fallen out of the industry and fallen into another world entirely. Gives me a unique perspective. I can see more than you can. Sometimes I can even see into the minds of others. Yet I still wear T-shirts with things like "Got root" written on the front of them. So I still play with things like a hacker.
The Internet worked because it was ubiquitous; people worked together towards a common goal, it was raw cutting edge stuff back in the early 90s when I first fired up a browser and went WOW!!!.... (as an aside the first time I ever went surfing I came across the Principa Dischordia within 30 minutes :-). I remember it well, a friend sat next to me as we both jumped on the information superhighway, swapping enthusiasm. Two people, two browsers, sharing a common experience.
But then you can't make money without building fences. So the whole thing fragmented. Tim Berners Lee may be one of my personal heroes, but it's his WWW that made it so simple to lapse into destructive patterns. Because we all use the web; it's the same thing we all use. So we assume everyone sees what we do. But it take quite a leap of mind to realize that today any two people sitting in a room talking about experiences online are in reality talking about two completely different worlds.
Communication is only possible if a perspective is shared. Yet we're moving away from a world where this is possible. If we're not careful we'll end up locked away in our own minds and we'll never be able to find a way to connect with others. There's no doubt were living within a time of change. But look at how most of the advances in how we integrate change is more about Value Adding to something you have to pay for. Social networking is the current Big Thing. It's the kind of thing suits wet themselves when they hear about it. But it's only because the existing social networks are breaking down that these fools are able to take it from out of our minds, to parcel it up, to sell it back to us. What's worse is we allow them to do it. Because we're lazy. We want the answers to be given to us. Why invest the effort when we can just pay. It's postmodernism overdosing on speed.
I was talking about how I integrate technology into my life yesterday. I was told "It's not real, not," as my antagonist waved her hand in the direction of the window, "like out there is". Only I can see just how the world outside the window isn't real either.
Personally speaking I find it odd to have developed a right-wing anarchistic perspective to life the universe and everything and to find myself looking to Marx for answers, but Marx says that we should develop the full potential of human beings. This led him to a project of an ideal life in which one has many professions but is not attached to any of them: a farmer in the morning, a factory worker in the afternoon and an art critic in the evening. A wonderful ideal which makes me suspect he was really looking into the future. Yet what he failed to appreciate was the way the sheep would look to the Economy to provide for them, to allow price to override common sense, to fail to develop the multi-faceted personalities which go hand in hand with his vision.
So my advice: Wander off and be a farmer for a bit. If the current state of the industry you work in gets you so wound up perhaps it's the unseen part of your mind, your little shadow, which is trying to tell you something that you simply can't admit to yourself, something it can see which consciously you're actually blind to. So change the parameters. Develop a new perspective. When you return you'll be able to see so much more. In a way it's what's happened to me. My old reality exploded and a new one was born. And having discovered two worlds I've realized there has to be even more worlds to explore. Infinity stretches before me and it's as scary as it is fun.
And now, to assert my Vorlon credentials another question:
who are you?
really,
who are YOU?
how hum... rant done...
