Self censorship and its impacts on thinking

As one person had once put it, self-censorship is like violence against the mind. I for one would have to agree.

The ironic thing about the interconnectivity of the internet and the social networks that it brings along with it is a tidal wave of share information. When Facebook was in it's infancy, you'd only have a few circles of friends and they would represent the closest of your friends, then you would reach out to old acquaintances that you might have lost touch after middle of high school. When young, you could write about anything and you wouldn't give it a second thought. Social networks at one point were "fun."

Then came people of influence or judging people by what they post in to the mix of social networks. When everyone is watching everyone at some point, the things that do get posted onto social networks becomes sterile. As of late the only things that are of any notes are of people getting engaged, married, having kids, baby photos, food and the like. Posts of what people honestly feel and think have for the most part disappeared from the posts of social networks. The same goes for when family, friends of family and even some colleagues starts to appear on to one social network-- the choking scent of bleach and lysol starts to creep in. The problem is that you just can't everything with everyone.

Infinite loops and unfinished thoughts

There are thoughts that you can't share with everyone because it will end up rubbing someone the wrong way. The fear of writing something down, kills the hashing out process of thinking through an idea and all that remains is that unhatched seed of an idea that doesn't go away, but cannot be explored further without the medium of writing it down. One of the greatest cleansers of the mind is to keep a journal of thoughts to off load things out of the mind. But this makes the assumption that you are able to complete your throughs to a satisfying degree on your own. What if you need the opinion of a few others is needed to close the thought? Somethings without closure can sometime be left spinning in the mind for a long time, like that last word to a crossword puzzle, what you should do in some business situation or what not.

That in essence is the problem that current social networks today have changed the way that we interact with people, we've grown too accustomed to dropping things into an ocean of ideas and expecting the right ripples to come back to us. It just doesn't work like that anymore-- there is too much that you can't say and you simply just can't be yourself (not to mention what the NSA might be watching of you). Which is to say that from what I see of social networks now as a facilitator of self repression or violence of the mind which is unhealthy. For those that do not take heed properly and post whatever they choose can lead to real world consequences.

Sharing is slowly getting smarter with lists and circles. But I think the next killer app is something that lets you control who gets to see what.

Due dates, motivation and a morbid curiosity

Nothing like a due date to motivate a student to get something done. I remember seeing an interesting  watch once that counted down the number of days that you had to live. I don't remember exactly the name of the product but the idea had stuck with me since.

I idly decided to checkout my life expectancy, because why should just the life insurance companies be the only ones to know when would you pass? After popping in my numbers the calculator came out says that I'd be around to 2060. From now till 2060 is another 46 years and the years at the end wouldn't be my best. There is a theoretical maximum fulfilment limit for each day that you live and my understanding is that maxima gradually wanes as time goes forward after hitting your personal plateau. From this point forward, everyday that you will have will be in effect the "best day that you will have," physically speaking of course.

Time is too easily taken for granted, like the adage "the sun will rise another day," we assume the near infinity of the universe where our time spans are much different. Why is it easy to take time for granted?

I read a financial article today "Why Elon Musk and Tesla Motors Inc. Stock Are Having a Great Week", it's not even worth linking to this article, but the idea that the stock price of a company trying to revolutionise transportation is some how relevant to the goals it is trying to achieve and even at the time span of a week? I doubt that the writers of articles like these understand the amount of work that can be achieved in a week to truly understand what it takes to execute no a plan as big as this.

I, myself had been privy to a project that I worked on for 4 years to make something new in the display industry. It hadn't become a commercial product by the time I decided to move on, but there are too few "great" things that can be accomplished in such a short period of time. People don't understand the about of preparation that goes on behind the scene before getting to any sort of visible stage. It's all been condensed in the success story like how the words "4 years"  can be said in under a second that represents a much different time span.

But this also leads people into a trap, the need to be thinking about doing something or forcing once self to do something to achieve some long term goal. I myself am not immune to this trap as I myself have caught myself to be thinking what could I be doing better, being bewildered at the time span at getting good at it and some how launching into some personal tirade to get myself to be more motivated to do things.

Motivation is unhealthy, like sugar is unhealthy-- it is sweet and it feels good but there is a crash when one is deprived of it. I will agree it is a great tool to encourage people to get things done and I have often used it as a tool when tutoring-- my students do great when I am providing them with incentives to do better, but it often stops when I am no longer teaching them. The most successful students that I have taught are the ones that are inherently curious and will dive deep into a subject as a matter of curiosity or habit and I would argue that true curiosity and habit are independent of one's motivational mood.

There is a wonderful book that I recall reading by Dan Airly called "Predictably Irrational" and for $8 is it a wonderful read with great insights on human success factors and how we find ourselves making the decisions that we make. I would sum that the decisions that we make are the result of either having no choice or when we derive pleasure out of it. Understanding these 2 factors will give immense understanding how many decisions are made.

Excel and databases should go hand in hand

Data is database driven and I am really surprised at the lack of good tools to visualise and update data in databases. Why is it that for every application that we need specialised applications used to connect to some database in some model? It doesn't make sense to me.

Even now after working with databases for about the past year, the current way that data management in databases is terrible, where we are restricted to using queries, inspecting the data and then writing update commands to update the data. This entire step needs to be done away with and there should be something in excel that could be used to go straight into the database and modify the data instead of using this currently terrible method. The market is huge for corporate users and I am willing to bet that given right pitch, it would be easy to get corporate users to use the product.

How things in Vancouver have chanced

I touched down in the morning and did a quick spin through the city. My, how things have changed. My first impression of the place is that there are condos everywhere and the property prices are going through the roof. $800k for a property with a decrepit house? Where do people get the money for all of this?

Obviously the money is not being made locally as the salaries are not high enough to support it. More  or less, the GVRD area is turing into an exclusive club where membership is paid through property. Rich people from other areas are coming in with wads of money are buying up property like crazy. Is this sustainable? I don't think so, but obviously time will tell.

As for me, there is no rush to buy property out here just yet, not sure what is in store for the economy of BC. I don't know what exactly we are producing with great efficiency here that warrants this, but it is most likely the intangible comfort of a laid back west coast kind of life.

I am curious to see at how the rest of real estate along the entire west coast of North America is faring. Is it only Vancouver? or the entire region that is being impacted.