Interpretive Reconnaissance
August 17th, 2008 • Comments »
At my place of employment, there is an ongoing safety campaign that solicits monthly safety slogans from employees. To promote the submission of safety slogans, one of the photocopied brochures uses the following blurb to announce its intention:
Let’s Get the Word Out
The remainder of the bulletin then goes on about how to participate and submit your own slogan, the rules, prizes, and blah blah blah. I first noticed this brochure several years ago. It was pinned to the bulletin board in the employee cafeteria in like, 1993 or something and has been there ever since.
One day, while sitting bored to tears in the cafeteria, I began to think about that statement, “Let’s Get the Word Out.” I began thinking about context, intention and perception, and how they relate to that otherwise encouraging statement.
Taken within context, pinned to the cafeteria bulletin board in a blue-collar production facility, the message seems to make enough sense in communicating the author’s original intention: sharing the important message of safety with as many employees as possible by “getting the word out,” as it were.
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Artificial Omniscience
August 4th, 2008 • Comments »
Eventually, virtually everything will be available through Google. You will be able to get information on anything and everything you ever wanted to know. As technology increases, and more and more data is logged into computers, the amount of data indexed by Google will approach infinity.
In addition to all preexisting historical information, books, music, manuals, software, programs and everything else that people and machines have already produced, there is an exponentially increasing amount of new data being generated every single day. Millions of people around the planet are blogging their ideas and recording their lives in digital format. Thousands of different languages, millions of new documents produced every single day.
As time moves forward, technology will continue to make it easier and cheaper for people to digitally record and publish anything and everything. Individuals will become independent media broadcasters, sharing their lives virtually with anyone who is willing to pay attention. The incredible amount of data generated by millions of people living digitally will be available online and indexed, tracked, monitored, and used by Google to influence markets and make money. Continue »
Cracked Mindedness
July 13th, 2008 • Comments »
I am always hearing about diversity, relativism and open-mindedness. Unfortunately, many of the people espousing these ideals often behave as if they were some of the most ignorant, close-minded people on the planet. What does it mean to have a “closed mind”? A closed mind is unwilling to consider new ideas and different ways of thinking. A closed mind thinks it knows everything, or at least enough to make it through the course of each day. The closed mind will not tolerate opposing opinions, and will do anything and everything to protect and preserve itself.
Sadly, many people are stuck with such tiny little minds. If you think that you might be one of these people, you probably aren’t. You see, tiny little minds arrogantly assume that they are correct about everything, and that there is nothing wrong with their mentality. No, instead, I find that many people have managed to accept the fact they don’t know everything, and that learning new ideas is generally a good thing. Such people do well to listen to others, and when possible, manage to embrace new ways of thinking and even change their behavior. The problem with most of these partially open-minded people is that they tend to think that they are completely open to new ideas when in actuality they are from it. Continue »