Culture trends in America: Connectivity and isolation in the 21st Century

The cat is out of the bag, as it were, on Google latest attempt to dominate the digital world. Unstrung reports that Google put in at least a 4.6 billion dollar bid for the700 MHz spectrum of wireless bandwidth. Unstrungs Dan Jonas reports:
“ Google (Nasdaq: GOOG – message board) has added to the pressure on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt a more “open” approach to the forthcoming 700 MHz wireless broadband spectrum auctions, saying that it will meet the minimum price of $4.6 billion for a specific bandwidth block if the commission accepts four conditions it wants to apply to the auction winners.”
What exactly Google will be wanting to do with this bandwidth is still subject to speculation, but one thing is clear Whatever it is, it’s going to make us all even more “connected” than ever before. Ten years ago, if you wanted to have a conversation with someone, you had only three choices. You could call their house, you could send a letter, or your could drive over for a visit. About that same time a novel technology called email had just began to come of age for the average American. Since then, advances in information technology have revolutionized how we connect with each other. Today, I can be reached by landline, cell phone, email, snail mail, AIM, MSN, facebook, myspace, and text message. Oh, or you could just come visit. So with all of these new ways to connect, why is that we as individuals feel so alone? Rachel Baldino at sixwise reports on a recent study exploring social isolation in the United States:
“Lynn Smith-Lovin, a sociology professor at Duke University, and one of the key researchers involved in conducting this in-depth, comprehensive study, says the findings indicate that one fourth of Americans reported feeling that they have nobody with whom they can discuss their innermost thoughts, worries and woes. According to Shankar Vendantam’s recent Washington Post article about this study, this is “more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.” This study is a powerful affirmation that simply being connected digitally isn’t the same as being in connection with others. You’ll notice that the number of individuals that feel isolated has doubled in a timeframe that has been marked by the rise of the internet and the cell phone. Is there a correlation between these two facts? I would have to say I believe that there is. In fact, I think this answers some of the more puzzling questions concerning the way that people interact in modern culture. Almost certainly you’ve seen in the news recently individuals who have ruined their own careers by disclosing intimate and at times sordid details about their personal lives online. Why is it that we as a people are gravitating towards the exhibitionism of full disclosure to strangers, while at the same time we seem irresistibly attracted to voyeuristic reality television? I think the answer, or part of the answer, lies in the findings of the aforementioned study. As an individual’s circle of friends continues to shrink, there will be an ever increasing need for someone to tell our troubles too. We just want someone to care. And at some point one becomes so desperate that the comments page on facebook or myspace becomes an acceptable replacement for true intimacy. Likewise, reality TV has become our replacement for keeping our friends secrets. Instead, we have the weak substitute of watching reality show contestants and celebrities air their dirty laundry. What a sad sick “connection” between people. Yet this is exactly the type of connections that we seem to be having more and more. Facebook instead of friends, Survivor instead of being someone’s confidant, and of course, we substitute pornography in place of actually being lovers. This could be an entire article unto itself. Even if we set aside for a moment the moral aspects of sexual addiction, the statistics tell a disturbing tale.
In a survey of 5,750 participants, 78% said they were addicted to pornography. 51% said that they viewed pornographic material daily. Sex is the #1 searched for topic on the Internet (Dr. Robert Weiss, Sexual Recovery Institute, Washington Times, 1/26/2000), and the number of pornographic web pages now tops 260 million, a growth rate of nearly 20-fold since 1998.(N2H2 Incorporated, “N2H2 Reports Number of Pornographic Web Pages…”2004).[Source] It’s abundantly clear from these numbers that we are seeking to replace even our most intimate relationships with a shallow substitute. And I feel that once again at the root of this disturbing trend is a deep sense of being “alone together”. We have this sense that, although we are connected to each other in more ways than ever before, we are becoming out of touch with each other. I am not suggesting in this article that information and communication technologies are bad. But neither are they good. They are simple a tool and as such, they are amoral. It is up to us as a society to realize that these information technologies are merely a means to enhance our interactions with each other, not replace them. Until we cease make these digital “connections” an end unto themselves, we will continue to feel as if we’re all alone together.

Capitalism vs. Socialism: Why it matters in this election cycle

“Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: ‘No man should have so much.’ The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: ‘All men should have so much.’”

Father knows best. At least that’s what my father used to (and still does) say when there was a disparity between my idea of how I should run my life and his idea of how I should run my life. I hardly think my experience is unique. Most parents feel they know what’s best for their children. And most of the time they do know best. But children grow up. When you’re no longer a child, a parent insisting that they know how to run your life ceases to become an asset and becomes an annoying intrusion into your life. The frank truth of the matter is that at this point, it doesn’t matter whether or not they’re right. As an adult, it is your explicit right to make your own choices. So what does all of this have to do with models of government? Well, in the case of capitalism and socialism, everything. The above analogy really highlights why I feel so strongly about capitalism. After all, the essence of capitalism is that the population at large should be free to choose how they run their own life. It’s the most practical democratic model in existence. Every person gets to vote every day on issues that matter to them. How do we vote, you may ask? Through our money. This is a really brilliant way to manage government. So you think Microsoft has an inferior product? Buy a mac. You think McDonalds is making you fat? Eat at subway. Of course there is one caveat to this system. This system assumes that the average individual is intelligent enough to make good decisions for his or her life. So what of those individuals make poor choices and wreck their lives? Well, that’s their right too. So you bought a nose job that you hate? That poor choice was your right. You ate McDonalds for dinner every night and now you’re an obese diabetic? That poor choice also is yours to make. I find that I can easily encapsulate the whole philosophy of capitalism in one simple statement: Its your life: make it or break it. Simple and effective. Of course wrapped into this statement are concepts that are hard for some to swallow such as the thought that if there is success there must be failure, and if there is personal choice then there must be personal responsibility. These concepts simply don’t fly in a society where lawsuits and learned victimization are the order of the day. Be that as it may, this system has much to recommend it. Let us now turn our attention to the socialistic model of government. As with capitalism, I believe I can sum up the tenants of socialism in one simple phrase: Its your life; but you’re not responsible enough to make choices and need the governments help. You see, much like the nagging parent, the socialist sees the citizen as an eternal child, and feels the need to constantly step in and “help” said child make the right choices. Want some examples? Sure thing. How about: The government should choose how you invest your retirement (social security). The government should choose your doctor, and should tell the doctor what drugs they can use to treat you (universal health care). The government should decide who educates your children (department of Education). The government should decide how successful a company can be before it becomes “too successful”(i.e. fining Exxon mobile for making “too much money”). Even mundane things like the decision to wear a seatbelt or the decision to ride motorcycles without a helmet are mandated by this “government knows best” philosophy. So what if government knows best? Whether the government knows best or not, it is grossly overstepping its bounds when it impinges on my freedom to choose how I live my life. Allow me now to opine on why I think so many good people can be misled by socialistic thinking. I truly believe that it has a great deal to do with compassion and kind heartedness. No one wants to see a homeless man on the street. No one wants to see a child get a poor education. And no one wants to see small mom and pop businesses go under. I feel that it is seeing the sad reality of life that causes many to consider socialism the answer to the world’s woes. But is it truly? One must remember the ugly side of socialisms allure. Where there is no failure, there can be no success; only mediocrity. Punish those who succeed in life, and this mediocrity will reign supreme. Reward people who fail at life with constant handouts, and they will continue to fail. Failure is the single greatest motivator for change, and to take that away from a person in the name of compassion is a true crime. Do I think that we should just let people fall to the wayside then? No, of course not. By all means educate them as to how to improve their lives. And certainly let us give to them charitably. The sad thing is, socialism even takes away the freedom to be charitable. When the government mandates half of my paycheck so it can be “charitable” with my money, where does which leave me? It forces me to be stingy, and denies me the pleasure of giving as I see fit. This entire discourse is particularly relevant in light of the current election cycle, and the choices that will soon be upon us. I leave it to you, dear reader, to determine on your own which candidates stand behind capitalistic principles, and which stand behind socialistic ones. By all means pick the candidate whose ideas you agree most closely with. Do you want to make your own choices, and in doing so take up the burden of personal responsibility and potential failure? Or would you rather be buffered from failure, and choice, by a comforting blanket of enforced mediocrity? No candidate is perfect or even close to it, so once again this year I’ll be voting for the candidate most likely to leave me to make or break my own life.

Culture Trends in America: The future of the written word.

“All those who have meditated on the art
of governing mankind have been convinced
that the fate of empires depends on the
education of youth.” ~Aristotle~

We all know that “The pen is mightier than the sword”, but are we on the brink of an age which is to be dominated by forces greater than the pen? For many centuries now the written word has indeed been a mighty instrument of change. In 1439, Johann Gutenberg created the first moveable type printing press, stole the written word from the hands of the academia and the clergy, and released its power to the unwashed masses. Life has never been the same. For the last five and a half centuries, the written word has been used not only as a sword, but as a political tool, a means to enlightenment, a repository of all of mankind’s knowledge, and of course as a lighthearted diversion from the weariness of this world. When looking at the sweeping changes brought about by such a revolutionary invention as the press, it is easy to forget that something else of import occurred on that day in 1439. As the written word was truly reborn on that day, so the spoken word began its final decent into oblivion. We don’t often think about it, but until the advent of the movable type press, books of any kind were extremely rare, and literacy among the common layperson was almost unheard of. Any knowledge one might acquire in these times came either from personal experience or from the spoken word. Family history, mythology, spirituality, and much else were all passed from one generation to the next by way of stories and songs. Now, nearly six centuries after the first book was printed in Gutenberg’s press, the spoken word has almost completely died as a means of conveying any lasting knowledge of any type. So, if the printing press killed the spoken word, what will kill the written word? It is increasingly clear that we are on the verge of a complete shift in the way that we share information. If the mode of this sharing from time immemorial has been the spoken word, and the world after 1439 was dominated by the written word, then the 20th century through the present has been, and is increasingly becoming, an age of the image. In my grandfathers day, any individual with even a rudimentary education was at least somewhat versed in classical works of literature, from Shakespeare to the Bible. Likewise, a student on the cusp of the 20th century needed a firm grasp on the mechanics of grammar to even gain admission to high school. Lets jump forward now to the present, and look at some startling statistics. One third of students graduating from high school will never read another book for the rest of their lives , and 42 percent of college graduates will never read another book. How inexpressibly sad and confusing. Where then will they get their knowledge? How will they unwind? How will they keep up with the times? How will they learn from some of the greatest minds ever to put pen to paper? But I digress. First let me share a few more statistics. 80 percent of US adults did not buy or read a book this year, and 70 percent haven’t even so much as darkened the door of a bookstore (source). What is going on? Truly to a great extent it is that we have traded our words for images,but is there not still a need for the written word? Although it is true that the written word has yet been outmoded as a means of sharing information, the pressure put upon it by our shifting world of images has caused drastic changes in how we view it. Words today have to be accessible very quickly in order to compete with images as a purveyor of information. In fact, since the advent of the internet (circa 1989), books simply cannot be printed fast enough to keep up with the speed of information. Who hasnt walked along in the mall and seen bookstores desperately hawking books for last years OS, or books informing you on last years stock picks. Information just moves too fast in many arenas. In fact, many of those in my generation are finding that more and more even magazines and newspapers seem too slow to keep us up to date. We would rather get our latest political and news coverage from RSS feeds and blogs and of course the almighty image. Even the quick daily newspaper is being outmoded as subscriptions are at an all time low and advertisers are jumping ship and spending their money on online ads. In fact, an April McKinsey & Co. study found that betwixt 1996 and 2004 newspapers lost 1.9 billion dollars in revenue. Now, with newer, easier to read portable devices such as the kindle becoming better and cheaper on an almost monthly basis, it appears that the printed word is surely going the way of the dinosaur. But at what cost? We already have a generation with almost no knowledge of philosophy or classic literature. A generation that, instead of quoting thoughts of men such as Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson, are heard repeating the inane banter heard on their favorite reality TV show or talk show. Who knows what the full price will be for our abandonment of our intellectual heritage. One thought keeps running through my mind, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Technorati Tags: culture, newspaper subscriptions, the written word, literature, kindle, philosophy, pop culture, gutenberg, the spoken word

Roll your own —-> Life (Reposted)

I work twelve hour days. That doesn’t leave much time for recreation, so I’ve taken to shooting hoops at night before bed. fortunate for me, there’s a park a few blocks away. on several such nightly excursions, I would come upon some of the local youth, smoking pot and drinking on park benches. Being as I am, I have more than once struck up a conversation. It was during one such interchange that that topic turned to career. I explained that my view of job and career was to take what you already loved to do, and get smart about how you can get paid to do it. These two young men responded by siting that they liked smoking pot and getting laid, and the conversation drifted to other things, but the thoughts about career stuck with me. In my view, we have had the whole concept of career worked out backwards for a long time. The basic premise of “making a living” is that you educate for a length of time, then work your guts out until your at least in your late fifties, then, when your mentally, physically, and spiritually worn out, you enjoy the dubious luxuries of the “golden years”. why is it that we feel the way we do? Why are we obligated to live in such a foolhardy, haphazard manner? I feel that there are three interlocking principles that we need to reassess if we are ever going to get away from this dissatisfying lifestyle which has become the status quo for the majority of us.

1) Have it NOW.
There is within culture today an intense drive to have our needs satisfied immediately. Microwave it, make a down payment on it, CHARGE IT. You know there is something wrong in our culture when instead of the total price of an item, we want to know what our low monthly payments could be. This attitude lures us in when we’re young, and by the time we realize whats happening, we’re trapped. We’re forced to work 80 hour weeks at jobs we hate just to pay the “low monthly payments” on things we no longer even have.

2) Happiness = Consuming.
There is this great myth in life that most of us believe, and all of us, on one level or another, have bought into. that is, that somehow my level of happiness is dependent on the things that I own or the money that I spend. this is absolutely a bizarre thing to believe since there is so much evidence to the opposite in our lives. let us examine some of the definitions of the word consume: CONSUME~

• devour: eat immoderately; “Some people can down a pound of meat in the course of one meal”
• serve oneself to, or consume regularly; “Have another bowl of chicken soup!”; “I don’t take sugar in my coffee”
• spend extravagantly; “waste not, want not”
• destroy completely; “The fire consumed the building”
• use up (resources or materials); “this car consumes a lot of gas”; “We exhausted our savings”; “They run through 20 bottles of wine a week”
• engage fully; “The effort to pass the exam consumed all his energy”

We have lost sight of the fact, it seems, that it is in giving, creating, and enjoying what is free all around us that true happiness is found.

3) Keeping up the “Standard of Living”.
If one were to do a bit of research, one would find that the standard of living concept was a response to the fact that with the advent industrial revolution, people for the first time could easily have all that they needed. so the question for those pushing economic growth to occur was, how do we make those things that were prior to this point considered luxuries into needs? the answer was to introduce standards of living. example: I am a physician, therefore I must own multiple cars and a big house. there is a standard for living for each socioeconomic level, and almost invariable that standard is several thousand (or tens of thousand) dollars more than what is actually earned. this is why no matter how much we make, we are always going into debt. we are always trying to attain the next “standard of living”. it is in this manner that we maintain our slavery to the almighty dollar as it drains us of time and energy, constantly chasing the next highest level.

So whats the answer to all of this? if we carefully reassess these three concepts and check their influence in our lives, we can remove ourselves from this vicious cycle of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. what would it be like for example, if instead of trying to live up to the next highest standard, you chose to live one standard below what your capable of? suddenly, your rich! what if you choose to wait for purchases until you can truly afford them? suddenly you don’t have to work all the time. what if you chose to revel in the joys of life all around you? suddenly, you have lasting, cost free satisfaction. And isn’t that what we’re all looking for? satisfaction? as it is said in an old book, “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. …

A tale of two countries: US and Honduras, a contrast (Reposted)

Recently I had the opportunity to leave the comfort of the US and venture abroad on a medical mission trip. The ability to be involved in humanitarian projects has been a dream of mine for some time, and so I was understandably very excited. As we flew into Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, my vision of a third world country seemed to be accurate. Below us a tangle of streets faded into view. Controlled burning was being done on some of the hillsides, and the airstrip was one of the shortest I’d ever seen. As we rode to our outlying base camp in a faded school bus, I saw more signs of poverty, lots of skinny dogs and skinny kids running down dirt roads that were lined with barbwire shrouded walls and rundown buildings. It seemed the perfect picture of what one would expect. But as the week progressed and I began working with these people more, I started noticing something strange. One morning as I was working on patient intake, I became aware of a sense of disquiet within myself. Some of these people have been waiting to see a doctor for a long time. Some of them for hours. And yet, not one of them was surly with the delay, no one complained, no one was put out that they were not at the head of the line. Each person sat in our rickety chairs and waited with beaming faces for their three minutes of time with a doctor. Thats when it dawned on me as to just how different these people were. In the US, if I was working in a clinical situation such as this, with medical shortages and delays such as this, I would not even be able to speak above the roar of indignant people. People who have been well trained in the lessons of constant victimhood and who assume that they are the center of the universe. This realization grew on me with each day that went by. The children cared for each other and loved each other. They didn’t take a thing for granted. Another thing that was conspicuously absent was the common waiting room spectacle of mothers yelling at their children. It was simply absent here. Completely, bafflingly absent. On the plane ride back my mind was filled with images of the people and their love of life and each other. How did we in the US, who are so rich materially, come to such a place of abject spiritual poverty. In Honduras I saw dogs treated like animals and children treated like people, in the US I see dogs treated like people and children treated like dogs. Where have we gone wrong? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not so naive as to think that there is no abuse or hate in Honduras. There certainly is. But among those simple people in the rural villages I saw a reflection of what many of us in America lack. An appreciation for the things we have been given: life, health,family. A lot of talk has been going back and forth recently about how we hope to be the philanthropic west and give a computer to each family in impoverished areas of the world. We want to save them with our benevolent influence. Perhaps we will be the ones to be saved.

The Glorious #1 (reposted )

Greetings! Today I’m kicking off my new blog, fresh squeezed perspective. We’ll be exploring culture, productivity, and the emerging trends in information technology. We live in a rapidly Evolving world, and in order to succeed in that world one needs to develop a mindset that takes into account the now fluid movements of culture and the way that information technology is shaping our lives. Gone is the time when culture could be categorized by decades. Now we measure the rise and fall of cultural trends in months if not weeks. Gone also are the days when the worlds power brokers were the individuals with money. Today the power of change lies in those individuals that hold the attention of the most people. We stand on the edge of a information renaissance that will change forever the way that we view culture, commerce, and each other. its going to be an interesting trip.

Study Finds Myspace,youtube,google,AIM taking the place of real human interaction? the true digitalife.

The internet is truly an amazing thing. for many of us, it has become our source of income, news, entertainment, and even relationships. the social phenomonen that has been labeled Web 2.0 offers more choices for social networking then ever before. pages and blogs are becoming more and more dynamic, and instant messager video messaging makes our online lives more emmersive than ever before.
A recent study by The Daily found that individuals who spent more than an hour a day on the
internet spent less time with their spouse or significant other on average than did individuals with who spent
less than an hour. This raises some intriguing questions about the
ramifications of allowing internet to replace true human interaction. At
what point do our virtual lives become pathological to our true lives,
or is there such a point? many will respond that internet
realationships are just as legitimate as “real life” relationships.
with the rapid progress of technology, such questions will continue to
become more important. will we ultimately become a society that
communicates almost exclusively through the medium of the internet, or
will we turn in a different direction? we’ll have to wait and see….but for now, I’ll start sociallizing with real people….as soon as I get done with my second-life session.

Microsoft misses the point.

Recently, zeropaid discussed the ever increasing and stringent antipiracy measures that microsoft is said to have developed for its vista platform, saying that even a legitimate owner of the software will have difficulty in maintaining full program functionality. here, once again we have an example of a large corporation missing the point and fighting the wrong fight. the basic premise that a corporation could develop a “uncrackable” antipiracy protection system is laughable. the problem is that large businesses in general tend to vastly underestimate the abilities and the tenacity of the “hacker” subculture. at some point, microsoft as well as other big companies need to realize that attempting to thwart a growing, highly intelligent community of individuals who crack programs recreationally is ridiculous. the companies just cannot change their protections often enough to fight off hoardes of programmers who thrive on “freeing” their software. A similar situation exists between the RIAA and the file sharing community. the harder the RIAA comes down, the smarter file sharers will get. the simple truth is that without impinging on our freedom to use the internet as we see fit, there is no way to stop the free exchange of information, both open source and copyrighted. these companies are going to need to adopt a different policy if they want to stay in buisness. the exchange of information is a powerful force, and the companies need to respect and work with that force. trying to stop it is like trying to put out a fire by throwing ice cubes at it.

Knowledge is Power.

congratulations. You are one of the lucky few to read the first blog entry of fresh squeezed perspective, my new blog page. this blog is written for infophiles. people who, like me, understand and appreciate the value of ideas in our modern world. in the past, those who possessed the most warriors had the most power, then those who had the technological advantage held the most power. now we are on the threshold of a new pattern. those who have the most knowledge possess the most power. information is the commodity of interest today, and those who understand and possess that information have the power to shape their world just as the industrial tycoons of the past. in this new information market, we need to be able to find and utilize all types of knowledge. with the myriad of information technologies now available, one needs no longer turn to a specialist for special knowledge, we can now use these technologies to become specialists ourselves. this ability to traffic instantaneously in knowledge will change the face of the earth, and I want to be a part of that change. I have a desire to know….not necessarily to know one particular thing, but just to know. to be on the forefront of ideas in many arenas. and thats what this blog is about, the pursuit to know. join me as we explore the world of information, and watch the unfolding of ideas that will change the world.