Everyone has at some point been in the hell of incoming messages, notifications and emails...never ending flow that gets you paralyzed.
Here is an awesome video illustrating how does it feel. Excellent editing, btw.
Digitals from Chris Crutchfield on Vimeo.
Those words brought me a relief. I've lately relized that the more I know the less I can digest and use. The overload and overconsumption of information gives an illusion of knowing more, but in fact the more becomes the stress. The quest for informaiton expands all the time and seems to be infinite. I've found saying "I don't know" to be a soothing exprience. Not knowing may become the new luxury nowadays. Besides some things are just not worth to know.
"We need to remember the value of nothing. It’s like breathing: you can’t inhale all day. We need to learn to make peace with the information we don’t know, to embrace the zeroes, to relearn the pleasures of hunger, need, interruption, restraint. We need to work up our ignorance muscles. We need to organize our internal absences to create meaning. We are responsible, in other words, now and forever, for our own deletionism."
Sam Anderson in ‘An Accidental, Experimental Masterpiece’
“All the left brain thinking and figuring out, can’t ever replace the shear mystery of being alive”
The history of human thinking from the caveman days forward. In so doing he links more than 4 decades of data driven developmental psychology research (based upon the work of Clare W. Graves) to the dramatic narrative of human evolution.
A lot can happen within 60 sec. especially when you are online
Virtual self is increasingly important part of our lives. Internet creates a virtual stage where we can play another role (roles) in the process of creating and inventing ourselves. Virtual identity is equal to the real life identity for many. Some creates new persona, which they don't dare to be in the real life. Virtual space gives more room and possibilities to stage the self...instant and with no limits.
But it takes time.
But it takes you away from the real live.
But it creates false hopes and expectations, which often can't be met where person meets a person.
It doesn't stop the ego...
Full of hope, we dedicate the time to show whom we are or whom we would like to be. impersonating the dreams, becoming the celebrities and paparazzi's of our own lives. Deprived of privacy.
The mystery is broken.
What would it happen when you would let your Internet life die...would your real life start? Whom would you be?
Will committing the virtual suicide impact you and your life? Is it immoral to encourage people to commit virtual suicide? Is a virtual identity just another shiny object of XXI century destined to extinct or is it something to last? or is it the extension of our personality?
so many questions...less answers. We see the new things being created in front of our eyes. This may get us scared and seek the refuge in the seemingly safe past. This may lead us to radical actions...like this oneWeb2.0 Suicide Machine.
“Web 2.0 Suicide Machine” allows users to permanently delete their accounts from social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.
Is something bad that encourages us to partially destroy our lives or is it just a funny gimmick, helping us to distance ourselves from our virtual self?
Would you dare to take the step and sign out forever?
Getting people out of poverty is not just about giving them money, it is about giving them opportunity to help themselves. Seeing the need, fulfilling it at creating the movement is what happened when Pedals for Progress and founder David Schweidenback have shipped over 20.000 used American bicycles to Rivas, Nicaragua. Amazing transformation caused by giving the people opportunity to be mobile.
The Bicycle City. Trailer from Greg Sucharew on Vimeo.
Does life has any rules? Or is it just a subject to unpredictable events? I've been always fascinated by people setting clear rules or resolutions and wondered how far can you go to stick to them? When you decide to change and adapt?
Today I've stumbled upon Tolstoy's 10 Rules of Life. Seems like tough rules for live...he broke them many times but it is amazing how we do strive for the clear guidance and map for our lives. Does having rules make us happier?
Could you imagine living by his rules? Do you?
1. Get up early (five o’clock)
2. Go to bed early (nine to ten o’clock)
3. Eat little and avoid sweets
4. Try to do everything by yourself
5. Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for evry minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater
6. Keep away from women
7. Kill desire by work
8. Be good, but try to let no one know it
9. Always live less expensively than you might
10. Change nothing in your style of living even if you become ten times richer.
"Man…. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived." (Dalai Lama)
I've been giving it a thought lately, trying to reverse the course of twisted thinking.
I've just read this very interesting article in the Guardian about Montaigne's insight into human nature that gets confirmed now by neuroscience.
"Four hundred years ago, the great French essayist recognized that our inbuilt capacity for sympathy depends on our physical proximity to others. Recent neurological research appears to back him up."
Very interesting that our morality is so tightly bound to the physical distance. It would indicate that despite what 'cyber utopians' believe we will not make the world better place cause we are connected more than ever. Internet doesn't get us any closer. Even though we feel we are so close, we are far away from each other and it influences our ability to feel sympathy and to fire the mirror neurons.
HT: Mark Earls
Excellent illustrated talked from RSA by Steven Pinker on why we don't say what mean...
I recognize lot of everyday situations when I try to maintain the fiction of relationship with others.
What I like most about the technology is the new communication opportunities it brings. Clever thinking and creating synergies between stuff we know and the new possibilities, makes the same old story sound a bit more new and refreshing. The to good examples of this are Black Eyed Peas and German TV show Galileo.
Black Eyed Peas has developed an iphone app BEP360 to promote (sell) their new album and video.
BEP360 is an interactive music video that provides augment reality experience (you just need BEP album cover to activate it). There is also option that gives user tools to create photo session with the band and share it with other fans. Pretty cool way to activate music on other level than just traditional video. Hope to see more such an initiatives.
Another examples proves that TV can be social if you make an effort to provide viewers with the relevant tools.
German TV show Galileo used augmented reality browser app Junaio to run an interactive quiz for their viewers. Viewers had to hold their phone cameras up to the TV screen and point them at the answer they wanted to select. Image recognition worked out which answer was being selected and a tap of the screen submitted it.Viewers received instant feedback whether their answer was right or wrong. The quiz activity was promoted before and the whole activity seemed to be a success with an increase in TV show share among 14-49 year old viewers.
Something that wil stick or rather one time phenomena. Time will tell. But there is no doubt that TV can be a social and engaging experience.
You can see a video of the TV experiment (after an ad) here.
Doing good gets you attention and makes people smile. Nice idea from KLM. Also a nice example of how online and offline merge and create new brand experiences for people.
In the world of information overflow and lack of time to process everything that hits us, this app may seem a great invention. TLDR is an online application that can turn long articles into short summaries. Just paste the URL of any article into TLDR.it and it will summarize the article for you.
Great utility tool. It may save you time...but it allows us to touch only the surface. Shallowness? Laziness? Can't we really find the time to read and explore in depth the issues that interest us?
The utility tools seem so exciting as we believe they make life easier and faster...but aren't they make us lazier?
Via PSFK
Weekend is just round the corner and I thought you may find it useful - the problem solving flowsheet. Hopefully it will help you solve at least some of the problems just before the weekend starts :)
