Mental Popcorn

Have you ever noticed how out-of-balance things in the world seem? I often wonder why more people don’t stop and think sometimes – think about the things they believe in, say, or read.

One of the more absurd propositions that I find curious in our society are the many number of occasions that result in people focusing on issues that are either unimportant, or grossly out of proportion when weighed up with other more important items.

Take for example the recent hoopla over Paris Hilton and the throngs of media that have surrounded her, and the hours of media coverage that one jail term resulting from driving with a suspended license can cause.

I have a theory about what we focus on as being important to us in our lives – I call it my theory of focus. You should have guessed by now that I have a theory for everything; just ask anyone who knows me in real-life!

So first of all, a bit about the concept of focus. Well, we know in a camera that focus is used to bring certain objects into a clear view, and so with our own lives certain items are clear to us, and others are unclear – or out of focus.

Sometimes life throws you something from a dark corner. It can hit you completely unexpectedly, and when it does it can cause your focus to change. You see, we all have focus, it comes to us naturally.

I consider focus to be all those things in our immediate (short-term) world that are important to us. Things that make us want to get involved, or things that make us feel a particular way, things that we care about.

If only we all spent more time focusing on important things, imagine how different the world might be.

Okay, this one is for the nerds.

A pretty big claim has been made by Microsoft in this Fortune article that many Open Source software applications (like virtually all of the technology being used by the Mental Popcorn site!) might be in breach of up to 235 patents owned by Microsoft.

This news has put the wind up the Open Source community with Linus Torvalds (creator of the Linux kernel) responding in this article suggesting that, if anything, Microsoft is possibly breaching many more patents from other people instead!

This got me to thinking about Patent Law in general and what restrictions it might potentially put on the betterment of mankind, and has it already been doing this?

For example, imagine (completely hypothetically) if Google had been successful in patenting the “entire” Search Engine concept as a patentable idea?  We all use search engines every day and they are invaluable for finding stuff on the Internet BUT what if they had decided to keep their idea secret – and vigorously litigate anyone else who tried to build a similar service?  At what point does the greater good prevail?

I leave you with this question.  At what point is Patent Law going to prevent human kind from progressing how it should; as an organic structure with the freedom to grow and evolve?

I almost didn’t add this entry. I’ve wanted to for a long time, but something has stopped me… Have you ever had this happen to you? Maybe it’s a long term project you’ve just been waiting to start, but you just haven’t started it! Maybe it is someone you have been meaning to call, but you just never get around to it…

We all suffer the same thing; this same sense of procrastination. I reckon the author Steven Pressfield most accurately refers to this as “resistance” in his book The War of Art; I read it a couple of months ago and it is well worth the read.

Have you ever had a moment where you were doing something creative and you’ve had a flash of inspiration? Did you ever find yourself in a situation where an idea you had was so incredible, that you surprised yourself that you could be so brilliant? There might be a reason for that…

One of the fascinating concepts in the book The War of Art relates to Greek Mythology, and specifically that of the Muse. The idea is that whenever we focus on a creative activity, we are in fact summoning a Muse who provides us with guidance and inspiration – it explains a lot and if you read the book it might just strike a chord with you, like it did me.

I don’t know about you, but I’m from Generation-X which according to Wikipedia is anyone born between 1961 and 1981. Okay, nothing unusual there, but why is it so god-damn hard for us Generation-X’ers to contribute content to the Internet? As usual, I’ve got some ideas.

I have a brother and sister who are both Generation-Y and it’s amazing how different their perspectives are when it comes to communications technologies; it’s as if their lives are connected via phone, e-mail, SMS and instant messaging all intertwined with each other.

As for me, instead I find myself communicating by more traditional means of telephone and e-mail with SMS fairly infrequently and instant messaging now and then. I even enjoy the now old fashioned art of letter writing, not so much for personal stuff, but certainly for business.

When it comes to contributing content to the Internet, it is Generation-Y that appears to be leaps and bounds in front of anyone else (except for maybe the Internet Generation, but these are still considered a subset of Generation-Y).

To prove that Generation-Y are the content creators, you only need to see MySpace or review the most popular videos on YouTube to really understand that this is the group that are most active in the content creation revolution at the moment.

So, why isn’t Generation-X motivated to blog? Well, this I can tell you from my personal experience, and I think it really comes down to a few points.

• Firstly, I believe that the “sweet spot” for developing life long lasting skills when it comes to communication with friends and colleagues is developed when we are in our teenage years; therefore Generation-X tends to rely primarily on Telephone with some use of SMS and other technologies; whereas Generation-Y has grown up developing relationships online as well as offline due to their high-exposure with multiple forms of communication. This one is pretty obvious.

• Secondly, Generation-X has witnessed the adoption of wide-scale, mass Telemarketing and Direct Marketing and as a result have a deep understanding of the loss of privacy that has occurred in the world; and I propose that this has impacted on Gen-X’s ability to contribute freely to the Internet for fear of one of your friends “Googling” you.

• Lastly, it has been largely the Generation-X skillsets that have built the latter part of the Internet, and as a result have been so busy “doing” that there is less time and/or willingness to create content; especially when you’re busy building technologies being consumed at lightning speed by Generation-Y!!

I really wonder if Generation-X will be the forgotten generation, as the amount of content left behind pales in quantity and significance to what Generation-Y are currently pumping out…

In summary, Generation-X have built what Generation-Y is using.