Frontline: Digital Nation

Sick today… in between naps i happened to catch this episode of Frontline that very closely mirrors my hopes and concerns over the effect that the digital age is having on us. Like many of us, i find myself straddling both sides of the issues i choose to be passionate about. While I worry about how the multitasking generation’s minds are being affected for the worse, i have also helped companies push their 21st-century learning agendas… While condemning the internet for completely overhauling my memory and the ways i process information, I celebrate it’s existence every day with my complete admitted addiction to being plugged in. Are we doing ourselves a disservice? or merely evolving?

It covers everything from the education system to video games to virtual operations in the military. If you are in the mood for something ominous, hopeful and thought-provoking this evening, i highly recommend giving this one a shot.

(6 parts… total running time 1h 26m 13s)

Link to Frontline Website

Tags: frontline, internet, multitasking, virtual reality, VR

The Cure for Discontentment: Use It

Reposted from http://seeinggood.com/the-cure-for-discontentment-use-it/

In my unemployment I’ve become a bit of an Internet addict. Between Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, my blog, and the fifty others in my Google Reader, I could easily fill an entire work week seeking and sharing information. As I’ve trolled the net these past couple months, I’ve realized the digital era feeds into the collective discontent that defines us as a nation—this idea that no matter what heights we reach, there is still something missing. 10 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power; 15 Ways to Shrink Your Waistline; 20 Ideas to Make More Money—these posts just remind us we can always be smarter, thinner, stronger, richer, happier, or just plain better than we are now.

Yesterday I found a post on Zen Habits—one of my favorite blogs—that addresses this very issue. Leo offers several cures for discontentment, including:

1. Change your attitude and perspective.

2. Take some kind of positive action.

3. Do something that gives you meaning.

I think the first is the most useful suggestion, but not for the reason you may imagine. Perhaps our discontent isn’t something to be cured but rather something to be accepted, appreciated, and leveraged.

I’m not suggesting we should accept unhappiness as the norm—just that we need to acknowledge the factors that encourage discontent and realize they aren’t going anywhere. Our society breeds dissatisfaction because it feeds the consumer machine. We don’t live in Bhutan—a nation that measures its success in gross national happiness. We live in a place where every day someone creates a revolutionary diet, publishes a ground-breaking self-help book, and creates a newer, more exciting technology that promises to simplify our lives.

We’re constantly inundated with advertising messages that imply happiness is just a face cream, cocktail, or gadget away. According to Juliette Schor, Boston College Professor of Sociology and author of Born to Buy, we’re programmed to accept the connection between consumption and happiness when we see advertising as children—at a time when we’re incapable of rational thinking. My point: dissatisfaction is rooted in our culture. Hell, it’s part of the human condition: the never-ending pursuit of meaning and answers to why we’re here. While we may find respite from our searching through meditation, selfless giving, and appreciation for what we have, odds are we will never fully relinquish the tendency to look for something more.

That doesn’t have to be such a bleak realization. One of my favorite quotes (anonymous) is “Always be happy, but never be satisfied.” It didn’t resonate with me at first because I didn’t recognize the distinction. But there is one. Unhappiness creates emptiness. Dissatisfaction breeds progress. I believe in acknowledging the factors that encourage discontentment, we can learn to identify the difference between enough and lacking in our lives—and then leverage our discontent for positive change.

If you dislike that your excess weight affects your quality of life, you may start a new exercise regime and become stronger for you and your family. If you’re dissatisfied with the practices in your business, you could innovate and come up with a more efficient, streamlined process. If you’re unhappy with your mother’s experience fighting cancer, you might raise funds to support treatments that ease the side effects of chemo. If you’re frustrated with our government’s policies, you just may run for office and fill a nation with hope for change in a time when it couldn’t be more indispensable. Discontent is only dangerous if you turn it against yourself instead of letting it empower you.

If that’s what you tend to do—if you are, in fact, persistently unhappy—I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t think anyone can offer a complete recipe for happiness in a blog post (or even a book for that matter). But I can offer you a piece of insight that helps me when I start looking for more: if there’s something that’s bothering you that you can control, address it. At the same time, ask yourself this question: can I still enjoy this moment, even though there are things I’d like to change?

Related Reading: The Power of Realistic Positive Thinking

What do you think? Should we pursue cures for discontent? Is it possible or advisable to become permanently satisfied?

By Lori Deschene, Photo Romancement

If you enjoyed this post, please support seeinggood.com by suscribing or sharing this post on Digg/StumbleUpon/Twitter (@BeMeaningful).

Lori Deschene is a San Francisco-based writer and editor. Visit her blog about positive thinking at seeinggood.com.

Tags: internet, multitasking, present moment, psychology, zen

The Future of the Internet?

There’s been a lot of these 3-D chat ads lately… especially here on tribe…

When I first got into 3D graphics i went to this conference where Adobe had a booth set up and they were demoing Adobe Atmosphere… kind of a 3-D environment thing for websites… and I thought to myself… “wow this is going to be the future… someday there will be some new 3D code to replace html and xml and flash and all that stuff… and a person’s personal website will be a 3D environment that you can walk through… You can tell people ‘hey come check out this video over at my place… my WEBplace’…” At the time I was thinking there might be big money in learning 3D modelling so that when this new world emerges I could rake in the cash by making custom high-quality avatars for rich nerds….

Now it looks like that might actually be a possible reality here very soon… i rarely click on these ads on tribe, but this one caught my attention… Looks like a combination of myspace and an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game)

I hope this doesn’t come off like I’m helping them advertise… but the whole concept fascinates me to death… I have many many theories about 2012 and the evolving internet is central to nearly all of them…

Video games were the beginning of virtual reality… especially the the new school ones where you can explore… not just be confined to a storyline.

Are we on our way? If so, is our virutal world going to be a mirror image of the world we have now? Is the world we have now a mirror image of a previous world that we destoryed? And where the fuck is Neo when I need him?

Tags: internet, virtual reality

Help Save Internet Radio!!!

Don’t know if you guys have heard about what’s going on with internet radio TODAY… but click on the links below to learn how everything’s about to fully suck… and maybe we can help. ~S

Today is the internet radio day of silence to protest the fucked up increase in royalty fees.
SoMaFM alone will owe $1.1 million if this goes thru, bkz it’s retroactive. What BS.

Anyway, check it out, if you like

somafm.com/
pandora.com/

www.savenetradio.org/

More information:

www.broadcastlawblog.com/archi…s.html

Tags: corporations, internet, music, net neutrality