Smilin' Bob's Cafe of Thought

Slinging mental hash since 2008
About Me

This is a dumping ground for all things that have no other place in my life. If I am bored, I will write something here. If I want to save a link or a video or a picture that isn't necessarily ready for public consumption, yep, it's here.

This isn't a blog.

If you found this via a search engine, I'm sorry and hope you do better next time.

Having said all that, feel free to kick the tires, doodle on the walls or just look around... and thanks for coming by.

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February 2011

 

Is Mark Zuckerberg a Modern Day Moses?

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Is Mark Zuckerberg a Modern Day Moses?

Time’s Man of the Year.  Now the new Moses?  The guy who’s invisible connectivity community helped bring down the Pharaoh of Egypt.  Mark Zuckerberg getting credit for Egypt’s revolution?   We were stunned last night as we watched Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer interview the de facto leader of Egypt’s revolution, the “Google Ganhdi,” Wael Ghonim.


During the course of the interview Wolf Blitzer asked Ghonim where the next revolution would take place.  He answered, “Ask Facebook.”


Isn’t the leader of a revolution in a Muslim nation supposed to answer,  “Ask God?”  In Tahrir Square square you could hear chants,   “Muslim, Christian, doesn’t matter; We’re all in this boat together!” Didn’t Obama give a speech about this in Cairo in June 2009?   This isn’t your father’s Islamic revolution,  our friends.


You can watch the entire interview with the Google Ghandi  in the video below.  Here is the relevant excerpt from the transcript,


BLITZER: Wael, this is Wolf Blitzer in Washington. So first Tunisia, now Egypt. What’s next?

GHONIM: Ask Facebook.

BLITZER: Ask what?

GHONIM: Facebook.

COOPER: Facebook.

BLITZER: Facebook. You’re giving Facebook a lot of credit for this?

GHONIM: Yes, for sure. I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him, actually. This revolution started online. This revolution started on Facebook.

You know, I always said that if you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet. If you want to have a free society, give them the Internet.


The one meme of the Global Macro Monitor is “transformative tech” and it is now transforming the map of the Mid-East just as it did in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.


Lookout!


Next up, Al...

Just to be clear since I am not sure how this will show up (I emailed it in from Google Reader), this is from The Big Picture by Barry Ritholtz. The title should link you to his blog. I highly recommend taking a long hard look at his writing.

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Are $300 headphones worth it?

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Are $300 headphones worth it?

A friend wanted to buy Dr. Dre headphones. They list for about $300.


Any audiophile can tell you that they sound like $39 headphones. Instead, consider these. We can prove they sound better!


But of course, that's not the question. It's not what sounds better, it's what's worth it.


The Dre headphones come with admiring glances at no extra charge. They come with self-esteem built in. You can argue that this is a worthless feature in a device designed to reproduce sound accurately, but you'd be wrong. After all, the whole reason you're listening to music in the first place is to feel good. To be happy. If the Dre's make you happy, and your happiness is worth $300, then they're worth it, no?


For others (put me in that category) I get more happiness knowing that I didn't fall for a clever marketing ploy, and I buy the ones that I believe sound better. Of course, that's a clever marketing ploy too--persuading me that better sound is worth this much. But don't tell anyone. That would make me feel manipulated.



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You Cannot Die

You Cannot Die

Have you ever thought about how difficult it is to actually hurt yourself?

I don’t mean a paper cut. I mean something that’s disgusting to look at, where you’re at risk for death. What would it take?

In this society, it’s very difficult. We are safe. And even if we are hurt, plastic surgery, free medical care (sorry, Americans), and medicine means we’ll recover instead of dying of an infection.

The only injuries we’re accustomed to in today’s society are not acute injuries, but chronic injuries caused by things like food, stress, etc.

Any world where cancer is a serious risk is extremely safe, because it means many people are living for as long as it takes to get cancer.

We’re in an eternal cradle. It’s very difficult to die, or to be seriously injured.

Think of the way we treat children, versus how they were treated 20 years ago. We have all been eternally infantilized.

I thought about this the other week as I spent time in Thailand with Julie Angel, one of the top parkour documentarians in the world. Watch her videos and ask yourself whether anyone would do them in a world where they were in serious danger of dying from an injury. Stunt men are willing to do their jobs because being on fire is now reasonably safe.

Think about that.

Instead, our cultural environment creates other risks. Being broke, dying alone, not fulfilling your potential– these exist because we are no longer concerned with being devoured by predators or afraid of starving. But these are risks that are significantly less severe, and much easy to recover from.

It’s possible to seriously hurt yourself, but only if you’re alone– when people can’t come to your rescue, or won’t, because you fulfill a social role that doesn’t get help. (Drunk Japanese businessmen and the homeless, for example.)

This culture creates media like Fight Club, which is revered because people are looking for authenticity and real risk which they can’t get inside of the system. So, they go looking outside of it.

What happens in a world where you cannot die?

You risk more, because consequences are diminished.

Peaks stay high, but valleys are reduced… for those who use the valleys to their advantage.

If you think this isn’t relevant to you, because physical culture isn’t a part of your life, you’re wrong.

In this world, you cannot die in any environment.

You cannot die socially because the social fabric smoothes over most mistakes with time.

You cannot die on the web because failure is cheap and the worst that happens is obscurity.

We are in a world where the chance of permanent, uncorrectable failure has dropped to zero.

It’s time you started living accordingly.

We think failure is forever. Wrong.

We think embarrassment can’t be recovered from.

We think losing is the end of the world.

Reprogram yourself.

You can cover up a bad tattoo. You can heal a broken bone. You can get into another relationship. You can move to a new city.

Nothing is forever.

You can recover from anything. No mistake is forever and most are easier to recover from than you think they are.

Do this now.

Below, write down the first act you will take as your new self– the one that cannot die and for which failure is insignificant.

Have it be something you are seriously afraid of. Something that makes your heart beat fast.

Then, after you’ve written it down, do it.

DON’T COME BACK HERE UNTIL YOU’VE LIVED.

†

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Hi, I’m Julien Smith.

I help people lead more productive, happier lives—one day at a time. This is my blog. If you like it, please

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