Communication Breakdown for My Generation!

So, with this past week of entries, I thought I would try to bring things together a bit so you might now where I am headed with all of this. Here is one idea...

CERN was working way back when with scientists throughout the world and needed to create a system that helped people interact with each other. The isolation of distance was not allowing people to work effectively and expeditiously. This new means of communication and transfer of knowledge allowed them to get more done, become more successful in their research, learn more about their science, themselves, and others. Since then, the world has quickly become flatter, as described in the book, which I have discussed and referenced numerous times in this blog, "The World Is Flat", by Thomas Friedman.

Through, Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen and the development of the internet and the interactive browser, what has been created is a new system of global interrelations between people. New and vibrant means of communication and interaction have developed. Anyone, nearly anywhere is able to discuss nearly anything with someone else. (I say nearly anything, nearly anywhere due to the fact of governmental controls or intrusion, such as China or even the United States.) In fact, numerous people can connect with numerous other people at the same time without leaving their home or office. There are millions of global communities growing due to this fact. People are reaching out beyond the borders and walls that bind them within their country.

Part of the problem I see in America today is that our business communities, and social communities are thriving on this new way of interaction and communication, but our government is falling behind in their understanding and or use of the technology. The old world ways of education are not copacetic to this new means of global community.

How can a teacher even begin to teach the children of the 21st century for the 21st century and beyond, when the children have a more advanced knowledge of technology and its uses as practices? Also, how can a teacher even begin to teach the children of the 21st century for the 21st century and beyond without these same tools that these children already have? We hear that children today do not interact with each other like "back in the day". I disagree! What needs to be understood is the fact that the days are getting longer and the nights are becoming shorter for our world.

My nieces have a Facebook page, just like hundreds of millions of other people throughout the planet have. I found them as I have one as well, GO HERE. This type of website is designed to create community with friends, relatives, and associates by streamlining technology so that one is able to communicate whenever they want, wherever they want, on whatever they want. They have this page connected to their cell phones, blogs, other websites. For the people that don't understand this, they may feel that technology has gotten out of hand and is isolating the new generation to behind a keyboard or cellphone. The debate is that this isolation is not allowing people to connect...

Communication and community is basically who and how many can stay connected on relevant issues for their group. To be able to share needs, necessities, and ideas. We have grown as a specie from a small tribal community to a now global community. Before the telephone, one's community or social circle was defined by how many people one could come in contact with in a few days time, before the news or information or necessity for the connection became irrelevant. Today, we as a global community can stay connected to relevance continuously. These thoughts and ideas can become more relevant or change just as quickly. This emergent process of human interaction must be respected and understood by our governments, as this is obviously what our specie is yearning for and involved in.

When there are people that have created communities of friends and associates with hundreds if not thousands of members in their community you cannot say that people are unconnected.

Have you heard the saying that goes something like, "When you are pointing a finger, how many fingers are pointing back?" If one has done any study with psychology one knows that when someone is accusatory of another the accusations tend to be what the accuser is guilty of themselves. It's much like looking in a mirror...now make that accusation...Change is inevitable, and constant. Not understanding the change is what creates the wrinkles in society. This is also a constant as new and younger generations look for their own voice, to create their own marks in society. It is just that much may seem out of control to those that do not understand or embrace these changes due to the exponential growth of technology and science.

The ideas of force and not cooperation or the isolationism is putting our country at odds with every other country in the world. Remember the mirror? You see, we are reaching an apex, a tipping point in our global society. What is inevitable is a paradigm shift in human relations. The old world interactions will still exist, however will become antiquated quickly. This new style of human relations is traversing the planet rapidly, as it has been doing these past 10-15 years. There has never been anything like this on this planet before. The changes in technology are exponential. The governments still try to govern the old world ways.



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(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs

Just a gigilo in a flat world...

When I read the book "The World Is Flat", by Thomas Friedman, I found some very interesting ideas that I tend to agree with. I have touted various ideas from that book here and other blogs over the past few years. One thing that we all must become more aware of is the implications to which a writer is giving and where the writer's thoughts are based from. Perhaps, within a byline of an institution such as the NY Times, it should be made aware that someone, such as Thomas Friedman, is an heir to one of the wealthiest families in the world. This may just change how the readers will view the information that he is delivering.

The July edition of the Washingtonian Magazine of 2006 discusses how Friedman lives in "a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, now valued at $9.3 million, on a 7½-acre parcel just blocks from I-495 and Bethesda Country Club." He "married into one of the 100 richest families in the country" - the Bucksbaums, whose real-estate Empire is valued at $2.7 billion. That was then, it may be sold now, I don't know this answer. Neither here nor there...right?

It is our responsibility as enlightened and informed people of our time to educate ourselves more with the information and technology that we have available at our fingertips today. So, when someone like Thomas Friedman, the prolific writer for the NY Times, and international best selling author, gives his "two cents" people will be able to sit with the information that he is delivering and begin to see just why he might be positing some of his ideas in the way he is.

I agree that the world has become a very small place with the advent of the Internet, global business and financial institutions, international corporate laws, various tax implications by locale, all help create a smaller global playing field. As a global traveler, I am still amazed with the fact that people can get on a plane and in less than 12 hours be on the other side of the world participating in a drastically different society and set of rules than where they originally live and participate. This kind of travel gave personal and business opportunities to the planet's wealthier crowd that didn't exist only a handful of decades ago. Today, the playing field has become even smaller due to the advent of the Internet, and much of the developing world, like India, China and others are able to outsource their labor force, ideas and technological prowess without the need to spend the money to travel allowing to become more strategic in their business.

None of this personal information I know about Friedman changes the fact that some of the ideas that I took away from his book are not valid or that I no longer agree or disagree with them. But, it does shed new light on the way that I might reflect over his ideas that I read. Knowing a bit about the writer allows the reader a bit more room to see where the writer is getting their viewpoints and/or why they may be stating a position one way or the other. So, when he touts the good that comes out of international business practices of outsourcing jobs that will help create global economic expansion, I can look at that statement from various angles now that I know with who and what is being discussed over his dinner table.

I originally pictured a flat in NY, a type of Woody Allen existence that Friedman had. Or even perhaps lazying around the summer home in Cuba or the Keys like Hemmingway, continually trying to analyze the world through his own books, sources and friends. I am sure I am still correct in much of this, it is just that the world I now know is much different than the more normal world I was envisioning to which his information was coming from.

Friedman leads not what most people who reflect the life as a writer would lead. His normal crowd is the world elite and not the Harvard literary professor. I am not against people making money. This is what makes this world go around. I don't think that will change, and certainly not in my lifetime. As altruistic or nirvana-esque I might want the world to be more like, it is what it is. I feel it is just responsible journalism to let the reader know a bit about where one's ideas are coming from. In the back of a book, on the fold, it will discuss a writer's education, other books written, how many kids or a marriage or partner...not politics, not wealth, not religion, much of what will enlighten the reader to where the views so powerfully generate from.

When Friedman is someone who generally writes about economic and political topics perhaps it should be known to the readers that his viewpoints are coming from an elite side of global society. Although, he married into his wealth, he lives a very different writer's life. He is surrounded by the world's elite, always. Therefore, when he posits his views as if he is a normal kind of citizen, one must understand that he is delivering the message of the global elite in a pill that is to be swallowed by the average of society in order to allow the world elite their way while we all smile along.


I will close with some relevant lyrics:

Just a gigolo
everywhere I go
people know the part
I'm playing

Paid for every dance
selling each romance
every night some heart
betraying

There will come a day
youth will pass away
then what will they say
about me

When the end comes I know
they'll say just a gigolo
as life goes on
without me

'Cause I aint got nobody
nobody nobody cares for me
I'm so sad and lonely
sad and lonely sad and lonely
Won't some sweet mama
come and take a chance with me
cause I aint so bad