Entropy. It is happening to all of us. It is a fact of life. Stuff moves from working to not working over time.
I experienced this last week with my computer. It’s the finest laptop I’ve ever owned (although there was that Macbook I had for work… but I digress). But, even at that, it decided to die.
I lost more than a couple of hours to the problem. In fact, as of this moment, it’s not fixed. It’s not fixed because, at it’s core, there’s a hardware issue that appears to be unrecoverable.
Things break. We get to decide how we manage those situations, but they’re not going to stop. I experienced a great deal of frustration with my computer situation last week. And then I remembered that it’s part of life. There’s a mandate to subdue the earth. Some part of that is putting order to the disorder. So, next time something breaks and you work on it for hours, remember that you are simply doing your job. There is disorder. Give it order. There is dirt on the floor. Sweep it up. It is good work you do.
a little more serious
If you feel like giving up…
Tuesday Quotivator:
Stubbornness as an Asset
There is a heritage of stubbornness among my family — both sides, in fact. My wife has a similar heritage. It is something we fight against at times, when it’s not to our benefit. But, it’s also something that works in our favor much of the time.
I saw this at work in the life of my daughter recently. We’d been “fighting” about thumb-sucking. We’d gotten down to just at night time, but I didn’t see a clear path to stopping that practice.
Then, my daughter decided to be interested in finger nail polish. At first it was,”When you stop sucking your thumb at night, we’ll paint your nails.”
“Okay, I won’t suck my thumb,” she’d reply. Then, that night, she’d happily suck her thumb.
It went that way for a couple of weeks. Then, she got serious one day. And all that day, she talked about not sucking her thumb. And that night, whenever we checked on her (frequently, I might add,) she wasn’t sucking her thumb.
She wanted her fingernails painted, dang it. So, she did what she needed to do. And she won.
I think that heritage of stubbornness, as dangerous as it can be, is also a gift.
Internet Silos
In 2013, Edge asked a bunch of people (people who are probably ideologically different than me in a lot of ways) what we should be worried about. The most fascinating answer to me was “Internet Silos.” Here’s a short excerpt:
We should be worried about online silos. They make us stupid and hostile toward each other.
Internet silos are news, information, opinion, and discussion communities that are dominated by a single point of view. Examples are the Huffington Post on the left and National Review Online on the right, but these are only a couple of examples, and not the worst, either. In technology, Slashdot is a different kind of silo of geek attitudes.
Information silos in general are nothing new and not limited to the Internet; talk radio works this way, churches and academia are often silos, and businesses and organizations study how to avoid a silo culture. But Internet communities are particularly subject to a silo mentality because they are virtually instant, meaning have no history of competing, diverse traditions, and are also self-selecting and thus self-reinforcing. The differences between online communities tend to be quite stark. That’s why there are so many silos online.
It shouldn’t be surprising that silos are fun and compelling for a lot of us. They make us feel like we belong. They reinforce our core assumptions, and give us easily-digestible talking points, obviating the necessity of difficult individual thought. They appeal to our epistemic vanity and laziness.
I worry about this. It’s easier than ever to exist in a world where you’re fed only your own opinions in a regurgitating cycle. That sounds gross, right? It is.
(you can read all 150 responses here)