The Wonderful Web

The Web is wonderful. It gives such quick and easy access to information that might have taken me weeks or months to find ... a time barrier which, for many things, would have prevented me from even trying. And now, with a few simple clicks, I can link Maslow's pyramid of needs to Herzberg's maintenance/motivation criteria, link that to Erikson's psychosocial development, Leary's Rose of interpersonal relationships, etc. etc.

And then, of course, somebody says something to ruin it all, namely the idea that we might have to start paying for some of the more interesting stuff. Which runs contrary to the idea that many of us have had, namely that information should be free. For some people, in fact (and certainly Tim Berners-Lee, the CERN employee who offered his transfer protocol to the world for free) that is the very essence of the web: sharing information. To me, this feels totally natural. And I also think it is a good idea, at least in the long run. In a sense, it is like a sibling to the "market will sort things out" dogma. With the difference, of course, that the market dogma is a short-sighted egoistic brat who can only win if someone else loses, and who hates his too-good-to-be-true sister, who works towards consensus and cooperation. The market-minded people will try to squeeze every last dime out of us, the information highway hippies want to share everything.

Or am I being too black and white here?

Western civilisation

Just a short, simple entry, as an antidote for the previous one: when asked what he thought of Western Civilisation, Gandhi replied: "I think that it would be a very good idea."

To react or not to react

The last couple of weeks, all my writing efforts have gone into some songs I am working on. But my blogbrain hasn't stopped working. One of the things I have been thinking about a bit is how to decide when to act and when to let things slide. And, as with most of the things I write about here, this is an issue at many different contexts and levels, from the home to work environment, through the level of the local community all the way up to the global level. And, again in common with a number of other blog entries, I distinguish three phases, namely input, response and outcome.

The input consists of whatever triggers a response. These triggers or stimuli can be external or internal, and can be the caused by a change in circumstances or by a change in attitude towards unchanging circumstances. And they can be physical needs, which range from basic, essential ones (food, health) to simple discomfort (I like my space and will move things that bother me or obstruct my range of movement aside) or emotional needs, such as the need for job security, friends, etc.

As for the response, everyone has their own "baseline" responsiveness, which can range from complete (comatose) inactivity to irritatingly hyper-(re)active. Inactivity may just be laziness, but may also be the result of reduced sensitivity (=a very high stimulus threshold). Hyper-activity can be a sign of insecurity and over-sensitivity. And responsiveness can either decrease with time (desensitizing), or increase, e.g. when a relatively minor irritation becomes a major issue).

The outcome or result of the response is important because it is (or should presumably be) the basis for future responses, the basic question being: was this really what I wanted, and if so, was worth the trouble? Asking ourselves this question, consciously or unconsciously, turns the process into a feedback loop. People learn from experience: the first set of results become input for a new round of the input-response-outcome game (or, put differently, we adapt our response to the expected outcome). [To preclude any suggestion of wishy-washyness on my part: as a general rule, I am against systematic suppression of certain behavior by others/society, but in favor of thinking things through and trying to learn from your mistakes on an individual basis.]

I suspect, however, that many people - and especially those would benefit most, namely those at the extreme ends of the responsiveness scale - are slow learners. And as a society, we are of course only as fast to learn as our slowest learners. Even so, I have the impression that, we are becoming more and more demanding, which brings us back to the core question: namely - assuming that suppressing our initial response for a moment and stopping to think first will help us improve - do we really want to do this, and is it worth the trouble? Is all this effort really improving our quality of life, or are we just a lot of energy into "fixing things that ain't broke"?

Let me know! :-)