Pareto principle – Thang Nguyen 555

Presidential terms last four years. Our life expectancy, used to be much less, now stands in the mid-70’s depends on the air quality near you. It’s an allotment. Non-negotiable. Except for a few variables e.g.unique gene pool, diet, exercise, stress level and accidents.

Some people even wish they were dead. If you drag on day in and day out pushing the shopping cart, full of discarded possession, then heck, yes, you should.

I don’t expect our leaders to solve every problem . They got 9/11 memorial to attend to, reelection or election speech to give, and negative ads to launch.

But then, the homeless men and the presidential candidates both have on hand only a few decades left to influence the course of history and to deflect deadly and detrimental trajectories e.g. healthier school lunches, smarter curricula, wasted talent (where would Bill Gates be today had someone not allowed him to practice programming skills at night in a computer lab).

Time is evil.

Rich men and poor men.

Strong men and weak men.

Faithful men and flirty men.

All got only that long to live, to learn and yes, to regret.

It’s part of the package: to err is human.

Those who risked nothing, gained nothing.

Money can be borrowed (especially today, when banks are pushing for it, but not without conditions) but time cannot.

The 80/20 rule shows us there are times when we feel and actually are more productive.

Athletes know about and leverage their peak time performance.

And Moore’s Law makes planned obsolescence a de facto (more apps with better speed of processing keep coming down the pipe).

Just don’t wish to live on forever, as the joke goes ” a man wished he could live on forever. So God turned him into a tree”.

Plan your funeral ahead, preferably with standing room only. Work backward from there and cross out that check list, one by one (gotta see Paris for example).

You will laugh and cry, and beat yourself for not seeing the elephant in the room, or the Emperor without clothes.

It’s the spirit of the times. We have all been willfully blind when inside the bubble (Tulip? Railroad? Internet? Housing?).

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Might as well. Because to him ,with hammer in hand, everything looks like nails.

When you get hammered down, don’t stay down. Gabby did not. She got back onto the platform, and not just any platform, but the DNC platform. Her time has yet to be over. So has ours. Stand up and stand your ground.

subtitle: the Machine that agrees with you.

You log on, and when you no longer want to continue, you can log off.

You search for sites and sound that fit you.

Machine = matchmaker.

You purchased this title, perhaps you would like to order that title as well.

How about connecting with this professional, or “friend”.

SEO.

First page results = prime real estate.

Forced choices

(because we can only remember top three pagerankings.)

Read top tweets.

View recommended links from friends. Click on publications you have regularly visited, and skim only headlines that catch your interests.

My world.

My mirror on the wall.

Life unchallenged, world view uncontested.

Connectivity was supposed to be content-neutral.

Is it?

In the end, the machine just amplifies your ego.

Push technologies like broadcasting have dominated last century.

Now, it’s “pull”, but we are not pulled in the right directions.

Unless, we consciously compensate for our natural tendency. Be curious. Be adventurous. View sites you might not otherwise cross path. Click on connect with people whose views you might want to debate.

That way, the diamond in you got sharpened, and eventually shined.

Two paths diverge, I take the one less traveled, says Frost.

The same poet also penned “fence makes good neighbors”.

Hence, look before you click. But also, he who hesitates to connect is lost.

In cyberspace as in life.

Mirror on the wall? who is the fairest of all?

I know they will soon sell a robot that keeps spilling out white lies.

It’s the demographic, stupid.

Next gen who grew up digital will not experience this tug of war, between the old and the new, three-dimensional reality and that of the flat screen.

Don’t tell me millions of hours in front of the CRT have been for nothing.

All the game playing, news reading, profile updating, and friend-searching amount to this: the search of one’s self in the age of digital. New play ground, new rules.

Like traditional retailers of brick and mortar, we have fumbled in trying to master this new online medium: vast quantity of materials on interactive sites and semantic Web.

Yet we brought old-world mentality to it, surrounding ourselves with Yes men.

Even post pictures of ourselves taken in the 20th century. No wonder, we fumble.

No wonder, we end up with default Search options. I am feeling very “unlucky”!!!!!!!

One of these days, I will smash the mirror, to see what’s on the other side (the 21st century equivalence of the 70’s Network’s “I am mad like hell, and I won’t take it anymore”).

Maybe, I will find my true self hidden behind what’s being reflected in front of me, day in and day out. I wonder if those time wasters were served up to collect eye balls, ours included. It’s intended that those “personalized” data were pushed there to hook me. They are there to sell me to sponsors, the same way traditional media have done for years since the day we were born.

Born to “amuse ourselves to death”.

Tag: Pareto principle

Time as equalizer

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