Musing

today’s Musing written and published from south Calgary, near Fish Creek Park

walk report: -5C/22F, overcast, quiet, lights are on but few people were moving; sidewalks nearly all bare, the path clear – that gave me confident footing, Gusta found interesting things to nibble where rabbits had been

things show up when least expected while the most anticipated things seem to take forever; that call out of the blue or someone doing something I wanted but did not expect – days lately seem filled with these moments; I heard a promo on CNN yesterday for an upcoming show ‘Earth In Peril’; I don’t think the earth will do anything but spin for many more billions of years, while what might be in peril is the lifestyle of its inhabitants so it might be better stated as ‘6 billion people in peril’

I’m not a squatter on the leading edge, but I have a notion where it is; I’m not geeky or ‘out there’ but part of me wants to try; each time I read about some cool new thing or clever twist on an old theme driven by new technology I am fascinated by the wayfinding exercise as much as what is at the end of that new path; in the 60s Alvin Tofler wrote about exponential increases in knowledge accumulation in his seminal book Future Shock but he made no mention of the internet so it seems we’ve gone way beyond his worst fears

a world gets smarter and smaller through speed (really though, it’s the same world, same size); speed of information flow, idea proliferation, movement of an economy, flowing waves of sentiment are like never before in history; in practical terms, the speed of information and ideas flying my way is incredibly fast; someone clicks somewhere on the planet and (except on days when internet service is down) it shows up in real time – I’m not sure if that is the speed of light or the slightly slower speed of its cousin electricity; a path examined or one not taken - metaphor for so many things Frost could never have imagined; but what of the path I did take; along the way the failures get dissected, but what about the wins, what about the successes; is there software to track that?

I wonder about further acceleration; it seems incomprehensible that we could get things happening ahead of when they actually happen – not that science can’t find a way to do that too, but think of all the forecasters who would be out of work because we could see the future; maybe that is what spyware is all about - some program to analyze my needs and anticipate provided to me before I’ve thought of or asked for it; websense ads is the Google methodology of having things I might be interested in pop up on my screen when I visit a website because software knows who I am; they know what I surf for, my demographic profile and keeps statistics on my online activities (hello big brother)

speaking of that CNN piece - I went to their website but got sidetracked by a video of a six legged kitten (CNN is not the circus, but with stories like that I have to wonder); before the video started a recruiting commercial for the CIA came on my screen; how do they know that as a teenager I secretly wanted to be a spy – was that me or just a byproduct of Bond movies and the Man From U.N.C.L.E. ?

Mark Kolke
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