Category Archives: Speculation

making do with what you have and making what you have do

July 25, 2015 6:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s not about having what you want it’s wanting what you have.

This is a popular old saying and long ago I used to think this was made up by people who had it all and didn’t want you to have anything.  Then I changed my mind and decided that there was wisdom here.

Now though, I’m wondering.  Wondering whether it’s not having what you want, that’s right out but neither is it wanting what you have.

I mean if you just wanted what you have you’d never get anywhere now would you?  A little bit of ambition is a good thing as long as it doesn’t go overboard and morph into avarice or greed.

It’s more to do with wanting what you have and then taking it and fiddling with it till it’s more like what you wanted or taking what you have and fiddling with it so you can get what you want.

We are the thinking animal after all.  We live not just on this physical plane but in an abstract world of ideas and concepts.  We look at trees and rocks and don’t just see trees and rocks but houses, and wheels, and roads and fire and whatnot.

Very possibly this is a unique gift among animals, maybe not but very possibly.

The thing is though that sometimes we become so frustrated with the process that we begin to despise what we have and focus on what we want and really warp our perspective.

Sometimes those plans just aren’t going to pan out and that thing that we want is out of reach.  Then we have to take a deep look at what we have and decide to ourselves that we can accept this as what we want or that we can use this to get something else we might want.

It’s never clear-cut is it?

Posted in: life in general, speculation, thought

Birthday lessons

July 5, 2015 6:57 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We celebrated America’s 239th birthday yesterday.  To most people it’s a chance to get off work and relax. Most of the population doesn’t sit back to consider the declaration of independence or the revolutionary war or the impact and meaning of these to their lives.

The few people who are paid to do this, social commenters, political writers, and those that make a living speculating about such things will usually crank out the same series of articles every year.  Either the founding fathers were God-fearing capitalist patriots trying to forge a new form of government in a howling wilderness or they were atheist, proto-marxists throwing off the shackles of oppression and  creating universal suffrage for all.  Most of the written pieces fall somewhere along this continuum with some detours delving into the issues of women’s suffrage or slavery. Depending on what websites you visit you will see one opinion voiced more than the other.

Of course not one of these views is wholly correct.  The founding fathers were a mixed lot of idealists and scoundrels, laissez faire capitalists and anarchists, land owning gentry and yeoman farmers, church elders and worldly men.  Each group had its own agenda and reasons as to why they wanted to break away from London’s control and the only thing they had in common was a realization that they would need each other’s support to achieve independence.

One thing that they all recognized however was the need to do something new and radical.  To post a logical declaration of grievances against their existing government and provide a sort of logical proof for the need to break away and to form a new government of their own.

I think that has been a vital part of the American character since before the start.  The urge and ability to try something new and not shy away from it just because it wasn’t something that had been done before.  Of course innovation and new thinking can occur anywhere in the world and at any time in history but I think it’s rare that it has ever been so widely accepted as it was in the early American era by such a large population.

I think it was a side effect of the excitement of being part of a new nation in a new land that allowed people the freedom and flexibility to think about new forms of government, the willingness to gamble on new ventures, the acceptance of new technologies, that sense that over time the nation would “improve” itself and that technology would leverage us all into a new golden age.

I find that somewhere along the way we lost that vital spirit.  Perhaps as early as the late 19th century but certainly after World War II.  We went from being a nation excited and curious about the possibilities and challenges of the future to being a nation in love with a past that for the most part didn’t exist in one way or another.  From being excited at the prospect of change and new thinking to being terrified of the idea and demanding that we stay in a social and mental limbo.  From pulling together in common cause to blaming each other for past and current woes.

Rather than trying to solve situations to find the maximum benefit for all of us we have balkanized our populations into competing and often hostile camps that could maybe pull together and benefit each other but for the most part practice mutual antagonism as a sport.

If we continue on our current route I am certain that we will not see another 239 years.  I don’t see us going past another 100 years.  Either our own inertial forces will rip us apart or competing nation states will begin using our confusion against us and will feast on our self-made misery.

We should respect the past and learn from our mistakes and follies if at the very least to honor the sacrifices of those that came before us.  But we should also remember that they made those sacrifices not for us to stay in the past but to progress forward and up into a better tomorrow.

 

Posted in: birthdays, culture, current events, holidays, life in general, myths, politics, speculation, thought

Turbulence

June 21, 2015 6:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The weather news reports for Texas have been unabashedly positive these last few months.  The local newspaper report that all our reservoirs, once empty and bleak holes in the ground, have now replenished and we can declare the drought over.

Of course it’s a totally different story out west.  California faces the prospect of another dust bowl summer and perhaps the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of farmland.  The rest of the nation faces higher food prices as a consequence.

Four years ago it was the exact opposite.  A neat little online tool can help you visualize it

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/MapsAndData/ComparisonSlider.aspx

While I’m glad that our condition has improved, I worry that the overall picture is slowly but surely deteriorating.  California will recover in time.  Of that I’m sure.  But these see-saw changes in the weather are leaving deep scars in nature’s ability to heal itself and to withstand the abuse that we throw at it.

Nature can put up with a lot and given time it can come back stronger than before but with the increased demands that we are putting on the planet I am not sure that the damage in some of the more marginal areas will heal this time.  As these marginal areas fail to heal and become wastelands other areas that were fruitful become marginal and we stress them even more as our material needs increase.

It’s a vicious downward spiral that has the potential of eventually becoming self-sustaining and unstoppable.  It to be arrested or even reversed and given time and conscious effort it can be.  But the time and the ability of our species to affect a positive change is rapidly dwindling.

These harsh flood and drought patterns in our weather cycle are just the beginning of what could be catastrophic times to come.  if we do nothing then this could become our normal way of life.

 

Posted in: science, speculation, weather

Perspectives

June 13, 2015 6:30 AM , Leave a Comment ,

If you open your eyes, and I mean really open your eyes you will find that life can amaze, astound, appall, and leave you speechless on a nearly daily basis.

We have so many things that we fail to appreciate when we look at them that we will never be able to fully consider let alone understand in this life that I can’t even begin to enumerate them.

One thing that I have learned to appreciate however is how a subject can change meanings and become a totally different thing if you let yourself take a slightly altered perspective on the matter.

We can come upon a situation from one viewpoint and direction and if we fail to look at it objectively it can take on particular meaning and it is often difficult to change that perspective unless you alter the way you perceive that subject and then an almost magical thing can occur.

That thing that you were so sure about, that you thought you knew changes almost immediately to something else.

Houston is a great place to find these changes in perspectives.  Because we have no zoning laws the neighborhoods here are a mishmash of urban and suburban and country.  All right next to each other.  Poor neighborhoods alternate with rich.  High rises sit right next to ranch style houses and those next to poor apartment complexes.

It’s something that I see on an almost daily basis and I have to wonder if people living in these neighborhoods ever stop to wonder and think to themselves how their neighbors from different socio-economic backgrounds perceive the world.  Do their viewpoints agree with my own or are they so set into their situation that they can’t step back and see the overall situation from a different perspective?

Posted in: activities, aging, life in general, speculation

The roots of corruption

June 5, 2015 7:06 AM , Leave a Comment ,

One of the big news stories currently being discussed is the investigation into charges of corruption at the world soccer federation (FIFA).  Several high-ranking members of that organization have been arrested and the head of FIFA has been forced to resign as a consequence of the controversy.  Not just minor little thefts or petty little bribes but mind-boggling huge bribes and corrupt practices that go beyond the pale.

Ordinary people like myself have to wonder at the culture that engendered and possibly even encouraged this type of corrupt practices to flourish.  How could this have happened?  Where were the safeguards and monitors that should have prevented this?  Even the basic tenets of standards and good practices seem to be missing here.

A blog that I recently read sheds some light on this.  Two of the points raised in this blog seem to be pertinent here.

Firstly, there seems to have been a culture within FIFA that not only tolerated but almost encouraged the corrupt practices that took place within the organization.  Bribery seems to have been expected not only by the perpetrators but also by the members of FIFA who seem to have accepted handing out bribes to officials as part of the costs of doing business with FIFA.

Secondly, a slow or even non-existent judicial process that sought to either stifle or shut down any sort of investigation and punishment of corruption with regards to these officials.  Corruption at FIFA has been a sort of open secret for years yet no one around the world and certainly not within FIFA sought to do anything about it due to the fact that no sanctions would ever be taken at all.

A third point that wasn’t in the blog but I feel also contributed to this problem is FIFA’s success.  Being the world’s largest sport federation and creating such a wildly popular sporting event such as the world cup I think gave FIFA officials the sense that they could do no wrong and that they were above the law.  Over time their excesses have grown and grown to the point that they have become inexcusable and impossible to overlook.

One has to wonder about other large institutions like governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations and ponder which of these may be hiding corrupt practices behind a veneer or infallibility or success.

How can reformers or critics point out these excesses without fear of reprisal and with the hope that change will take place? How can those within an organization spot these corrupt practices as they take place and take steps to curtail them before they bloom?

 

Posted in: business, current events, ideas, life in general, speculation, sports, standards and practices, thought

Catalysis

May 22, 2015 7:10 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Catalysis, the process of accelerating a reaction, mostly associated with chemical reactions, this process can also take place in other situations.  Mainly I’m thinking about human interactions here.

When you get together with other people whether at work or play or in study, something happens just by interacting.  It’s an inevitable result of humans being social animals.  Exchanges are made no matter how careful one or both parties are.  Exchanges of not just physical goods but ideas, notions, and attitudes.

Just the slightest contact is enough to set the human imagination going and from there who knows what can happen.  The best example of this would be the great Columbian exchange where not just plants, animals, technologies, and diseases flowed freely back and forth between the Old and New world.  Ideas and concepts made the journeys as well.  Unforeseen consequences followed but nevertheless the exchange would form and fashion the world for the next 500 years to come.

But even at human scale levels these exchanges can yield extraordinary results.  So many new ideas and concepts have come about from people getting together in coffee houses or in libraries or other public gathering spaces.  Free and unfettered exchanges of ideas are always generating new concepts and pushing the bounds of our civilization.

But beyond this I think these exchanges not only serve to disseminate information but to stir up humanity’s competitive spirit.  I think that when people get together and see what other people in other fields are doing that they themselves feel compelled to make an even greater effort in their own fields.  The Catalysis I mention is not just exposure to new concepts but the exposure to the passion and drive that other people have for their particular field.

It’s one of the reasons I love going to large conventions and to art showings and to book readings.  I find that I leave more energized and determined to do better and to try different things after attending these gatherings.  The energy is infectious and the result is that I want to do more in my own life than I previously did.

Posted in: culture, ideas, pop culture, relationships, social networks, speculation, thought

the convergent world

October 22, 2014 6:25 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I wrote earlier in the year about the reasons why I wasn’t going forward with Google Glass.  Most of those reasons still apply but this week we took a major step forward.  The next level in mobile connectivity speed has been reached.  Trials for a 5G network.  This may one day remove one of the major stumbling blocks to ubiquitous mobile communication.

Devices will be created to take advantage of this and to keep up, most carriers will have to have higher data transmission rates.

Yet even with this major milestone I am still hesitant about devices such as Google Glass.  Privacy issues aside, and believe me that’s not a small thing, I still see Google Glass as a somewhat clunky and perhaps even a dead-end technology.

I believe that ultimately the technology will reach the point of not projecting something over a small screen but directly manipulating a user’s brain waves to augment reality.  Nanotechnology would be introduced into the body and would manipulate the signals from the optic nerve to the brain to introduce “artifacts” into the field of vision.  Basically you would gain the benefits of something like Google Glass but it would exist only in your imagination.

Besides the nanotechnology that would be injected into you or perhaps swallowed in a pill you would have some sort of transmitter/receiver implanted under the skin to handle all the internet traffic.  Such devices do already exist and some have had the operation to have similar devices implanted already.

The nanotechnology could even go further and introduce sensors all around the body to monitor vital functions like heart beat, muscle tone, digestion, even blood chemistry.

Some of the first results in memory manipulation and memory decoding are being done at this moment and it may be possible to manipulate, record, or erase memories like a hard drive.

Now, is this a positive or a negative development?  Like anything made or dreamed up by a human it has potential for both.  We already bristle at the abuse of our privacy online.  Inviting the technology inside of us may lead to even greater abuses.  People releasing our medical records, our location, our thoughts is a seriously scary thing.

Once again the technology is outpacing the ethics.  Really the only one that has even obliquely tackled this idea is William Gibson.  We have some ideas but we don’t have much time.  Technology keeps moving forward.  Should we?

Posted in: future, speculation, technology

The mobile revolution

September 6, 2014 6:42 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We’re getting there. This time it’s not just some wishful thinking or cheerleading on my part. The days that we were bound to a desktop or even a laptop to be productive are coming to an end.

But what will take their place then?  Difficult to say really. If one were to be taking bets back in the late 70s as to what the workplace of the 2010s would look like I would hazard to guess that no one would assume that the office typing pool would have disappeared or that the vast rooms filled with filing cabinets would give way to mainframes that would store magnitudes more data than they ever could. We were simply not ready to imagine this back then.

Will we ever be free of the physical office space?  I rather doubt it. Humans have a need for personal contact that no computer camera or office meeting software can provide.

Certainly the software and hardware aspects will become moot points in the discussion within the next 5 to 10 years. I am in fact typing this out on my smartphone and although it is a bit awkward, the auto-correct works well and the hardware can handle most of the productivity software on the market.  I could, in a pinch, work like this for an extended period of time.  Wouldn’t be the most comfortable thing, but it could be done.

I imagine with speech recognition and advanced touchscreen controls that we could make the experience less cumbersome and much more user friendly.

No, I think that the main argument will center round how can we leverage the producers of content and product. Does increasing a person’s personal comfort equate to higher returns or do producers need to have an overseer or peers to boost their performance.

Will we one day return to the old office model just from a need to bond with others? Who can say for certain.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: business, future, speculation

taking the low road

July 28, 2014 6:37 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Can we ever objectively justify doing something of questionable morality or acting in a way that is not within the norms of accepted behavior?  I know that in moments of crisis or extreme temptation that we can justify to ourselves doing something unethical but what about under regular circumstances?

From time to time you may find yourself in situations under which you are not under dire threat or where your direct interests were not under peril and acting in an ethical manner might be bearable if maybe a little personally painful.  You would suffer a little but it would not be a huge loss.  Under these circumstances you might be tempted into using information in a way it was not meant or acting in a way that was not strictly speaking “nice”.  But normally you would turn down the opportunity to act in anything but the most proper way.

Where does an honest person draw the line?  How dire does a situation have to be before you are “allowed” to act in an immoral way and be able to claim exigent circumstances?  Do you feel bad afterwards?  Why?

Do you in fact have a duty to act with noble intent under all conditions?  Are you bound to be honorable even under conditions when you are in imminent danger and bound not to act in defense of your being?

Is a threat to your livelihood, love life, or even just your mental state enough to excuse your actions?  Is it really that black and white and straightforward?  Should it be?  Why?  Are these questions uncomfortable?

Posted in: speculation