When I was a child, I would sometimes lie in bed at night and speak the mantra "I am alive" to myself over and over until I was able to conceive the strange sensation of my mortality. I still do this practice from time to time, and I think it helps me to remember that whatever might be happening at that moment in my life is impermanent.
IMAlive is a website dedicated to being present for people in moments of crisis. Certified volunteers are available for immediate chat with anyone who is seeking someone to reach out to for help. Thanks to the beautiful internet, and a thousand willing strangers, a half-hour chat can be a life-affirming beacon for a person who has lost hope.
Every one of us craves sleep, endures the pangs of hunger, quells the hunger with muchos tacos, gets ill (hopefully not from the tacos), feels his dispositions wax and wane, and some of us even shed our endometrial linings on a regular basis. If you're anything like me--which is equal parts likely and unlikely--you've noticed that in addition to these obvious recurring events, your body has many subtle cycles and rhythms. And so it is with all living organisms.
As discussed in my prior post, feedback loops are a very useful tool in understanding and changing behavioral patterns. Biofeedback, one day, will provide opportunities for this feedback on the physical scale. I don't pretend to know how the technology would be integrated with our bodies, but here is a list of possibilities that I anticipate and desire:
Sleep, Exercise, and Caloric Metrics
Because who doesn't need a little more guilt about consuming those beers and hot wings late into the night? Or more of a reason to take that bike ride or seek a good night's sleep?
Menstruation Tracker
I only have my perspective here... but I think this form of biofeedback could be super useful for men too! I see a few possibilities: 23rd century rhythm method and fertility notification, early pregnancy detection with gestational feedback throughout pregnancy, PMS prediction, no more yearly women's wellness visits or self breast exams.
Medical Assist
Imagine a world without blood screens or diagnostic procedures; where cancer is highly treatable due to early detection; physician notification when your levels are out of balance; immediate detection of allergic reaction before Anaphylaxis occurs; emergency services alerted in the event of an elderly fall; minor illnesses diagnosed without a trip to the doctor's office; and perhaps the eradication of hypochondria.
Mental Health Awareness
Science still has a lot of progress to make in the understanding of mental illness. Biofeedback would offer annals of patterns related to mood and stress, as well as an opportunity for patients to opt to provide researchers with data that can aid in deeper knowledge of brain function.
Although I'm certain this kind of intimate biological perspective would not appeal to some, I see the future of this technology as highly customized to an individual's desires, useful for the advancement of science, affordable for all who would seek it, and able to integrate into the field of medicine. I would certainly be one who would want to use this technology to realize my own biorhythms and to aid in improving my lifestyle for the sake of joyful longevity.
As an observer, I'm always interested in noting the patterns and cycles that occur in the apparent chaos of life. Learning a programming language and studying the paradigms of coding has offered me a new and interesting lens with which to view this circuity. One of the concepts that has been prevalent in my thoughts lately is the loop. In programming, a loop is a series of code that continually repeats until a specified value is reached, until a specified iteration of loops is complete, until the loop is ended with a stop statement, or never--in the case that the loop is intended to be infinite or lacks the necessary programming to interrupt the circuit.
Starting out on such lofty plan as becoming a developer is frightening. My family is not college educated. I'm 29, which feels like a late age to begin to code. I'm a female in a field that is almost completely dominated by males. I live in a small city that doesn't seem to have much industry for programming. I didn't pursue advanced mathematics in high school. I didn't have exposure to the concept of programming as a career choice at an early age. I might not be very good. Perhaps I'm not intelligent enough, or capable of understanding the levels of abstraction. I'm not sure I can keep up with the ever-increasing amount of knowledge required to keep an edge in the field. I don't know any local developers personally.
Now read the prior paragraph over and over. This is my fear loop.
We all have repeating thought loops, whether we are consciously aware of them or not. We internalize ideas from things that we have heard people say, things we have felt, experiences we have had, and we form them into a series of code that we bury deep in our internal programming. One day, for one reason or another, that portion of the program runs, and the loop begins. My supposition is that this is a form of protection that has evolved, and that at one point or another has served to keep us safe and to prolong our lives. In this case, though, I don't feel that I'm benefiting from this loop, and now I'm writing new code to interrupt the circuit. I'm not out in the wild grabbing tigers by the tails, or anything. I just want to do what I enjoy without fear and without feeling like it's something that I cannot or should not do... when that's just not true.
In keeping with my strong tradition of lists, here are some things that make the large corporate office working environment sucky:
You have to travel to get there
There are people who steal food out of the fridge and lotion bottles from atop desks
There always seems to be a droning noise in a room filled with cubicles
The lighting is generally atrocious
There are lots of, let's say, personalities to deal with
For some reason, it's hot or cold as hell
You feel like Big Brother is constantly watching you
It is difficult to maintain focus on work with so many distractions
Bathroom: poo and booger smears (What is up with that?!)
Equipment shared by hundreds of people tends to break frequently
You must be extremely mindful of conversation topics, the width of your tank-top straps, what your T-shirt says, whether your shoes could be classified as flip-flops, and whether the minutia of your actions might be abusing the company in some way or offending someone who sits a few feet away from you
Although I tend to fare well in a large office environment, it's definitely not my most preferred working situation. Sometimes it can feel a bit as if you're being herded like cattle. Thanks to technology, the limitations of where and how work can occur are gradually diminishing, and the nature and structure of work are changing in ways that people like me will be able to utilize in order to flourish.
Thanks to technology, small business is booming. New ideas are cropping up, and offices are able to keep staff streamlined and to create well-honed teams of people who work well together. I can assure you that as a developer, I will be looking for privacy and quiet in order to produce at my very best. Check out Fog Creek Software for a fine example of a company who is taking this idea to heart.
Teleworking is becoming increasingly common and can save a company quite a bit of money, as well as improve the quality of life for employees who would otherwise need to commute. Not to mention the potential for being able to work in one's pajamas. I submit that this would significantly enhance the quality and productivity of my work. Wink.
I also recently discovered the concept of Co-working, which is a situation in which a group of independent contractors share a work space. Although the concept isn't exactly new, this community method of working is newly available to many people in the tech field. I love this concept, and I hope to do some freelance developing in such a community someday.
Check out New Work City for a New York based example of how co-working happens.
Image via WikipediaLet me take this opportunity to update you three on my life!
The Fall 2011 semester of school is raging, and by that I mean the professors of my two online classes posted the entire course-load during the very first week of the semester. School is a great deal more manageable than I remember from prior college experiences, but I think I can attribute that to my actual genuine and goal-oriented interest in the subject matter, coupled with my newly--in the last 3 years, perhaps--cultivated grown-uppiness.
I've taken to keeping up a routine, which works very well for me. I am fortunate (and unfortunate) to have only myself to care for, and so I don't have many unexpected events to interrupt my schedule.
In light of my decision to start off in a new educational direction, I've also worked in some other fine goals and habits, some with relative success. I have the time to experiment with new ways of living, so I'm working on some of the things that I always, on some level, felt I wanted to do. Boring things like regular meditation, etc.
Do you know what has recently been the biggest boon to my quality of life? Cutting back on mindless television! I've set some limits, and now I spend my extra time doing the following:
School work and other learning endeavors and edutainments
Cleaning real things and computer things
Fixing electronics and/or tutoring my family in how to use their smartphones
Playing guitar and other artist endeavors
Reading something
Thinking about technology and spirituality
Exercising
Going out into the world and looking at other people's faces while words come out of our mouths, and touching them where our arms go around each other
Financial planning
Cooking
Brainstorming lists like this one
Thinking about and occasionally writing blog posts
Listening to entertaining and life-affirming podcasts
Playing with my dog
I like using technology in ways that improve my quality of life, while avoiding it in ways that it makes me feel not good. Im'ma love you, im'ma miss you.
There has been some discussion that as technology advances, we--as individuals--are getting dumber. We don't memorize data because it lies at our fingertips at all times. We indulge mindlessly in reality television. We disconnect from one another as we develop online personas that more closely match what we wish upon our real selves.
I posit that although we may be undergoing changes--biologically, sociologically--as we delve deeper into the world of advanced technology, whether we grow emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually is still up to us. And in many ways, technology has aided us in that we have tools at our fingertips that we can use to learn, even if it is on the smallest scale, those things which we seek. I may not know your phone number by heart, but that doesn't mean that I have a void where that information would have been stored.
Often--since the internet is indeed at my fingertips--I search for answers to simple questions that pass through my mind throughout the day, and I've noticed that almost always, someone has already asked the question, and someone else has already provided an answer. We share our knowledge because we feel compelled to share, and we seek because we feel compelled to know.
As I learn to embrace change, and to flow with the electronic tide, I find that I discover in the e-world that which I had already found in myself (and thought myself alone or one of few in my discovery--but that is not the case). We are obviously connected, and we have found a way of expressing that to one another. Crude a start as it may be, here are some of the ways technology makes me smarter, better, and more in love with you:
Radiolab
Among the many podcasts that I listen to while working or otherwise living, Radiolab is one of my favorites. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich regale me with artful and scientifically poignant discussions on the human condition.
The Moth
True stories told live without notes, available in podcast form. These stories are emotional, heartening, funny, frightening, sad, and beautiful. They make me feel less alone.
WIRED Magazine
I love to know what is happening now in technology, and what advances we're musing upon and reaching toward as the future becomes today.
TED Talks
Ideas worth spreading. I enjoy watching these conference-style talks on a great variety of subjects.
Audible
I read while doing other things; working, driving, exercising. Audible offers one audiobook per month for a subscription fee, and it is well worth it.
Stack Exchange
I have knowledge to share, and I have questions to ask. Stack Exchange is a group of Q&A websites on a huge variety of topics. You get credibility points and badges for participating, but even more exciting is how the structure of these sites lends to sheer erudite intelligence. Not to mention how quickly you can get detailed answers to specific questions.
There's so much information out there. Use it for good. And don't feel bad for not remembering my phone number.
Tonight I read this article on Huffington Post. Apparently Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officials in San Fran got a hot tip that a protest was set to occur, and they decided to cut cellular communications in order to prevent people from coordinating a potentially dangerous gathering.
Lately there has been a great deal of discussion on the subject of technology being used to promote liberty, in light of the Arab Spring. Check out this article on the impact and relevance of social media during the uprisings.
After reading the HuffPo article about BART, I browsed some of the comments to see how others felt about the situation. As one can expect when reading any comments related to a politically charged situation, the reactions were very polarized. I did hit a link from one of the indignant reactors that took me to the source of my inspiration for this post: a YouTube video of Naomi Wolf speaking to an audience about her book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. I highly encourage you to follow the link and watch the video. Over 1 million people have seen it--a testament to technology for the preservation and promotion of liberty--and I feel it's such important subject matter for anyone who cares about the fundamental liberty that we stand to lose.
Where once I could sleep on any surface and in any position--not to mention in any circumstance and for nearly any length of time--as I creep toward the end of my youth, I have lost that precious gift. Now I must perform very specific and timely bedtime rituals in order to get my winks (which better be 8-10 hours worth or else), including but not limited to brushing and flossing, reading something, allowing at least 30 minutes of quiet time in bed, assuming a time tested side or back position, switching between those at least 4 times, sticking the landing, praying toward mecca, kissing a quartz crystal, striking animal bones together, etc. And if I try to sleep anywhere but in my own bed upon my 3-inch memory-foam pad, forget it. It's like The Princess and the Pea up in here.
In the future, I propose we have bedchambers--not the whole bedroom, per se, but an actual chamber--where we can completely customize our environment to suit individual needs. In discussing this idea with co-workers and friends, I was offered some ideas which I will now share along with my own:
Houses come equipped with them. They're as common an appliance as a refrigerator.
Soundproof to the outside world, but can wake you in an emergency or for an otherwise specified reason.
Wake you peacefully, in contrast to most (heinous) modern alarm clocks.
Custom lighting, sounds, temperatures, and smells permeate your sleeping environment according to your pre-programmed desires.
A plasma mattress or some kind of air cushion force cradles you perfectly.
Sensors adapt the environment to keep you cool/warm.
Can easily accommodate 2 (or more) people for sleeping and/or horizontal dancing.
Your settings travel with you to foreign bedchambers. There's an app for that!
"Secret" has many meanings. For the purpose of this blog, I am referring to personal knowledge--pleasant or unpleasant--that an individual hides within himself.
"Secrets make you sick." Alcoholics Anonymous uses the phrase to encourage members to divulge secret stressors that contribute to their addictions. Secrets--especially those that are particularly emotionally impactful or those that we feel we must not discuss--can easily lead to obsession in one form or another. Likewise, happy secrets can be nearly impossible to conceal. They affect our moods and our manner of interacting with and perceiving the world around us.
It is difficult to deny that secrets affect us all on a very primary level. Ages old wisdom encourages that we write them down. In our modern, technical era, we can share our secret joys and burdens at Post Secret.
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
I partake every Sunday. As for my own secrets, my canine companion, Bear, knows them all.
I'm currently taking a delightful course at Lincoln Land Community College entitled Understanding Technology Today. It's a great course full of high-level information that is quite useful. I find the title of the course, though, kind of adorable. As I'm reading, I seem to have more questions than answers. I can tell you all about modern technology, and will be able to regale you with even more facts at the end of the semester. And yet, I can't help but feel this ineffable dissatisfaction with my understanding of technology.
For example, when I speak to you on the phone, our voices are transmitted as data across wires or radio signals, etc. What I hear is an approximation of your voice: the data. It's really only an extended concept of how the actual ear works. And the data that I hear across great distances thanks to technology, it sounds almost exactly like the real thing. What about when I call an automated phone system? The computer at the other end receives the data, but it's not like there's a person holding a phone up to a speaker for me to hear what the computer has to say to me. Or maybe there is? My guess is that the computer is sending data that is structured in a way that my ears and subsequently my brain can perceive it, but there are no on-board sound cards involved. I have no idea how many other people are on other lines with the same automated system having the same conversation with a computer that is replicating hearing and speech, or how many calls it can handle. I have no idea if it's thinking about something else while it's waiting for me to call.
Click the photo for an article on how consumers hate phone trees!
The more I feel that ineffable dissatisfaction with my understanding of technology, I'm finding more and more that it resembles the same dissatisfaction with my understanding of human existence. I'd like to think the low-level knowledge exists somewhere on the planet, and that some brain of a person can explain to me exactly how the automated system works, but something tells me that having a true understanding of how or why technology works on a truly fundamental level is a lot like traveling at the speed of light.
In this regular feature, I will discuss technologies that I would like to experience in the future.
Click on the photo to view the website it came from.
It's probably a million degrees outside, and I am le tired of putting my sunshade up all the time. By that I mean, I never put my sunshade up. Lazy = ideas, people. Dear future auto makers: please create built-in and/or automatic sun shades for our vehicles. The thought of getting into my vehicle in the raging summer heat and feeling nice and cool (or even not nearly as hot), or touching the steering wheel and not having my hand flesh melt off, or not surprising myself with a liquid-magma hot seat-belt buckle, or even being willing to buy a black car (again) someday... these things make me weep.
Obvious design enhancements aside, I imagine a future where our vehicles drive us places without needing human intervention, an invention we're clearly working toward. In addition to that, though, I would really love it if my car would run across town and pick up some dog food for me while I'm at work. I think we can all agree that if we didn't have to spend time running annoying errands that are usually for our families, we would love them more. Okay, I kid, I kid. But it would be nice if I could hop on a Petco app, order my supplies, indicate that my auto will be arriving to pick it up, pay in advance, and have a nice sales associate (or robot, whatever) load it into my vehicle. My on-board inventory module will tell me exactly what products I have in the vehicle, so I can verify that everything I ordered is there, and there are no apparent problems that need to be addressed before my car makes the trip back to the work parking lot to pick me up. Maybe it could even have a cooler/freezer combo compartment for groceries and perishables. Ice cream at a tailgate party? Uhh, yes.
Each week I plan to include a fascinating fact that underscores how we use technology in creative ways (sometimes without realizing it) to enhance our lives!
If you're a frequent denizen of the Interwebz--and if you're here, I know that you are--you may have recently encountered (and been annoyed by) a verification widget while using a website. A verification widget is that pesky box with words or data that you must type in correctly (even though it's all mashed together and there's the Web equivalent of paint splatter and debris strewn across it) to verify that you're a human and not a bot. See the image below, for example. The purpose of this exercise is to cut down on infuriating spam (the electronic kind, not the meat, per se) in forums, e-mail, social networking sites, etc.
Google offers one of these anti-bot services for free, called reCAPTCHA. If you type words into the reCAPTCHA verification widget, you're actually helping to digitize books and probably saving the planet somehow!
"About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into "reading" books."
Let me just preface my entire blog by admitting that I'm not a developer yet.
Without further ado, I hereby announce my intention to ride the tiger and the lightning, and the eye of the tiger, to rope and to ride, to seek and to destroy, to write beautiful and dangerously glorious programs, to take occasional vacations, to heed some take-actiony quotes, and to lock my stuff down so tight that not even a 1932 edition Ovaltine Secret Decoder Ring can touch it!
This blog is meant to be a home for my musings on a life colored by technology. It's an open-source treatise from the angle of a 29-year-old female who finally has a goal, but is literally JUST taking her first steps toward its achievement.
Every one of us craves sleep, endures the pangs of hunger, quells the hunger with muchos tacos, gets ill (hopefully not from the tacos), feels his dispositions wax and wane, and some of us even shed our endometrial linings on a regular basis. If you're anything like me--which is equal parts likely and unlikely--you've noticed that in addition to these obvious recurring events, your body has many subtle cycles and rhythms. And so it is with all living organisms.
Image via WikipediaLet me take this opportunity to update you three on my life!
"Secret" has many meanings. For the purpose of this blog, I am referring to personal knowledge--pleasant or unpleasant--that an individual hides within himself.
Let me just preface my entire blog by admitting that I'm not a developer yet.