We have all come to accept, for the most part, that change continues to happen at a more rapid rate all the time. You may not think of it in those terms, but we acknowledge it in both obvious and subtle ways. It's a by-product of the tech age and I feel it's a matter worthy of some reflection because I know it's changing ME.
After all, centuries ago (to take a big step back) there were significant stretches where a son could expect to live in a world nearly identical to that of his father--or his grandfather--and perhaps even more generations than that. Certainly there were moments where developments jumped people forward and changed the shape of daily life or altered the landscape in some fashion, but those were the exceptions rather than the rule, at least from a supposedly enlightened 21st century perspective.
Those transformations happened faster and faster in more recent years, particularly as eras like the Industrial Age and Space Age ramped up that speed. The last several full generations have each lived in a setting that was unlike the previous one in a number of ways. Expressed in the pop culture sensibility of the late 20th century, that's part of the "generation gap," or as Will Smith put it while he was still The Fresh Prince, "Parents Just Don't Understand."
A good bit of that is tied to how we communicate--not just the language of the times but also the very method of contact (perhaps the old Marshall McLuhan line is more accurate now than ever: "The medium is the message"). Flashing back to the model of previous centuries, you have the printing press come along, and refinements to that process, sure, and that's the headliner for a long time. But once you get deep into the 19th century, one development begets another and within 150 years, you've taken the telegraph and telephone through enough steps (via radio-TV-PC, etc.) to where we now really have more devices and faster ways of communicating than we have valid things to say!
My ultimate point is this--today there's not exactly a generation gap in the same way we may have had in our youth with our parents or that they undoubtedly did with their parents. Nope--now we can have the equivalent of that same gap IN OUR OWN LIVES. What convenience!
What am I talking about? In a nutshell, I am not entirely sure what I share in common with the me of even FIVE years ago. Obviously we're the same person with the same background and basic character, but follow me for a moment...the 2006 me did not have an iPod nor iPhone, was not familiar with Twitter and Facebook or well-versed in YouTube, did not own the car I currently drive nor hold the job I currently work...plus at the start of that year I was not even living in this house (and my family was split in two cities while making the transition). The iPad simply did not exist, and I'm reasonably certain I knew nothing of the Kindle or the Nook, if they existed.
Now I wonder what I did with anything resembling spare time. Watched TV and read books, perhaps surfed the web and checked e-mail, I suppose (how old-fashioned, me of 2006!). These days I can spend seemingly endless hours on my iPhone, jauntily bouncing from app to app, catching up with countless others on Facebook (mostly old friends I thought I had "lost" until I "found" them again in cyberspace) or on Twitter (mostly famous folks I've never even met in real life, whatever that is anymore). Perhaps instead I'm playing games that test my mind, like trying Words with Friends or taking Sporcle quizzes, or ones that instead test my threshold for addiction, like Angry Birds or SkyBurger (or to be frank, many, many others as well). I thrill at the "magic" that is my iPod, holding more than 8000 songs--and always growing, capturing a full CD collection built over years and putting it in my pocket. The latest device addiction is my Kindle. Yes, they got me too. I have a life-long love affair with books, it's true. But I've been cheating with a Kindle, and loving every minute of it. Surely it won't be as satisfying, I thought. Wrong, I was (talking like Yoda, I am).
So all my "free" time has transformed into a cavalcade of wondrous devices that do miraculous things in my eyes--gadgets that do the stuff I spent years saying, "Wouldn't it be great if we just had something that ____?" Well, we've got them now. And I'm hooked. But not the me of just five years ago--no, that Luddite is blissfully unaware of the transformative power those beauties will have on him in such a short time. That simpleton...and I say all this knowing that when the day comes that I take the step to iPad user, I will likely have the same opinion of present-day me.
No, it's not just on the home front, either. I've had my current job for four years now. When I joined, I was to have responsibilities centering on the website and video streaming for the Big South Conference. Those segments are still at the core of what I do, but you have to add in all those other things now: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, the blog, plus coming up with mobile solutions and reacting to new platforms or trying to anticipate next steps. The 2011 me has a job the 2006 me couldn't have properly conceived of back then. Strange but true--talk about following an Imperfect Compass!
So you see what I mean about change? This is not one generation to the next--this is not even really about one decade to the next--this is all within a five-year span of time that has seen alterations in technology and communications, easily obtainable by the average consumer, sufficient to turn large aspects of our lives into something new and different. Thus we are changing within ourselves...not a generation gap, but a Regeneration Gap--a term that would have seemed more aptly applied to Doctor Who than to me or you, but such are our times.
Perhaps five years from now as I reread this internally on the wireless communicating chip implanted in my brain, I'll think of how backwards I was in 2011 for thinking up such nonsense, right before I hop into the matter transporter that gets me across town instantaneously. Yeah, we always joke about what science fiction got wrong (where is my levitating car anyway--preferably one that folds into a briefcase), but consider for a moment what it got RIGHT. We've got people walking around with more computing power in their pocket, or hand, or purse, right now than existed in the entire world altogether when the Space Race began. No information is beyond reach, no experience beyond sharing (for better or for worse). What a SHORT strange trip it's been.
My Choice Song for the Post: "Time" - Pink Floyd
(really, using any version of "The Times They Are A-Changing" seemed both too obvious and heavy-handed, and the Dead reference closed the piece, but consider how "Time" puts its focus on the passage of time and spending time, that seemed appropriate...plus, the song is solid)
My iPod's Choice via Shuffle: "Holding On" - Yes
(looks like the iPod also felt a classic rock vibe, which is good--but don't confuse this tune from the later-day Union album with the similarly-titled "Hold On" from 90125, which is simply one of my favorite songs and albums)
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Getting More Specific
"When I was growing up I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific." --Lily Tomlin
She has a point, doesn't she?
While this subject is one that can get deeply intellectual and take volumes of space, I will not be digging in that hard...no point in trying to juggle the whole of philosophy and identity in a blog entry, right? Of course, that doesn't stop some people, it seems.
But anyway, here's the thing--I think we all have made choices and taken so many turns that we feel the inevitable pull of what if I had done something else--gone the other way? Who would I be today?
That simple split is the foundation of everything from existentialism to time stream theorizing. It's what gives us the thrill of historic or science fiction and the inspiration of Robert Frost poetry quoted at a thousand graduation ceremonies.
In an oversimplifying way, existentialism can be seen as a flowchart system for life: we are the sum and result of our chain of yes/no decisions. That premise can easily seem to create different resulting personalities, but we forget that all too often the lines on those charts have a way of merging down the road.
Looked at another way, one science fiction series I enjoyed reading as a young man regarding the subject of time travel (Simon Hawke's "Timewars", although certainly not the only stories to hit on ideas like this one) suggested that time was like a river--that the metaphor of a time "stream" was remarkably apt. The concept of change was addressed as such: some changes of events are the equivalent of throwing a pebble in that stream--the water goes around it immediately, swallows it so no change is really evident; some changes would be more significant, much like throwing a boulder of size into the waters--forcing the flow to come back together after a gap; while other alterations could be critical, the equivalent of forking the river or even damming it up altogether.
What am I getting at here? Well, let's face it: having the bagel instead of the cereal for breakfast did not alter the course of your life--that's the pebble in the stream, the flowchart option box that returns you to the main line regardless. Not ALL our choices shape who we are, certainly not on a fundamental level, even though the chaos theoreticians would have you believe not only did that bagel potentially matter, but so did the shape of the spiderweb outside and the flap of a butterfly's wings, etc....there's only so far that one could consider going down that route before you become immobilized with concern for the implications.
So when we wonder about the choices and the results, we are generally more curious about those river-fork incidents, or what my favorite author, Sir Terry Pratchett, likes to refer to in some of his works as "the Trousers of Time": those junctures at which you find yourself going down one leg of the time stream or the other.
If I had taken this job instead of that one, moved here instead of there, did this with my money instead of that...if, if, if.... See, these are the things that can keep you up at night if you let them--the things that can make even the most satisfied and relaxed person muse on the implications: would I be the same person today? What would be different in my life?
These issues are not of the Frank Capra "It's a Wonderful Life" bent--we do not typically ask ourselves the "what if I were never around" question like George Bailey does...at least not if we have any sort of positive outlook. It takes a thoroughly negative soul to theorize that life would be better without one's very existence, or at least to think that for more than an instant.
No, these are the matters that we usually worried about at the time we made the decision in the first place, or perhaps entertained second thoughts in short order. Lots of those choice points may involve our professional lives, but for plenty of folks the choices might be more about relationships...each of us has a personal list, whether it's one we keep track of or have moved beyond (or ignored, and as Rush sang, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"). Either way, just as no two people are the same, no two lists would be the same.
Let me bring this back to me for a second...hey, my blog, my rules.
See, I have had lots of times in my life where I've dwelt on the "what ifs" and wondered where I would be with a change here and there, if I'd have any piece of fame, or wealth, or whatever, instead of what would be considered by some on the outside to be a remarkably average middle-aged life.
But--and here's where we reach the sappy emotional payoff ending of what you thought was an otherwise cerebral discussion--I can look at my son and see that everything was done the right way, so long as he was the result.
One more pop culture reference comes into play here: Watchmen, by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons. If you're familiar with the seminal graphic tale (or even the faithful-to-a-fault film), you know that this same realization is part of what saves the world...if you don't know the story by now, the odds that you care about any spoilers will be ridiculously low, so I continue...Dr. Manhattan has dismissed the flawed and self-destructive human race as beneath rescue or redemption--until he understands the beauty of creating unique individual life (even from dark circumstances or amid tragic times) as he gazes upon Laurie (all of which happens on Mars, but let's not get distracted further).
Maybe I could've followed another path, made other choices, but at what cost?
My place in life is a good one right now: my wife, my son, my job, my house, my car, all fit me--the me I have become, have CHOSEN to become...by following my Imperfect Compass, of course.
I look at my son, my captivating nine-year-old boy, and watch him grow into an amazing young man--see him read books I loved at his age, thrill as he develops into quite the soccer player, listen to his evolving appreciation of the world around him, shake my head as he does things without thinking them through...all of it.
The choices that matter are no longer the ones in my past, but the ones I can help him with in the future. I am exactly where I was meant to be, precisely the result of the right choice that got me to him..."and that has made all the difference."
My Choice Song for the Post: "Dancing Nancies" - Dave Matthews Band
(not a better song in mind for the core of this discussion--it's exactly about the question, "could I have been--anyone other than me?")
My iPod's Choice via Shuffle:"Room Full of Mirrors" - Jimi Hendrix
(well, I suppose what's more appropriate than that if you are asking questions of yourself?)
She has a point, doesn't she?
While this subject is one that can get deeply intellectual and take volumes of space, I will not be digging in that hard...no point in trying to juggle the whole of philosophy and identity in a blog entry, right? Of course, that doesn't stop some people, it seems.
But anyway, here's the thing--I think we all have made choices and taken so many turns that we feel the inevitable pull of what if I had done something else--gone the other way? Who would I be today?
That simple split is the foundation of everything from existentialism to time stream theorizing. It's what gives us the thrill of historic or science fiction and the inspiration of Robert Frost poetry quoted at a thousand graduation ceremonies.
In an oversimplifying way, existentialism can be seen as a flowchart system for life: we are the sum and result of our chain of yes/no decisions. That premise can easily seem to create different resulting personalities, but we forget that all too often the lines on those charts have a way of merging down the road.
Looked at another way, one science fiction series I enjoyed reading as a young man regarding the subject of time travel (Simon Hawke's "Timewars", although certainly not the only stories to hit on ideas like this one) suggested that time was like a river--that the metaphor of a time "stream" was remarkably apt. The concept of change was addressed as such: some changes of events are the equivalent of throwing a pebble in that stream--the water goes around it immediately, swallows it so no change is really evident; some changes would be more significant, much like throwing a boulder of size into the waters--forcing the flow to come back together after a gap; while other alterations could be critical, the equivalent of forking the river or even damming it up altogether.
What am I getting at here? Well, let's face it: having the bagel instead of the cereal for breakfast did not alter the course of your life--that's the pebble in the stream, the flowchart option box that returns you to the main line regardless. Not ALL our choices shape who we are, certainly not on a fundamental level, even though the chaos theoreticians would have you believe not only did that bagel potentially matter, but so did the shape of the spiderweb outside and the flap of a butterfly's wings, etc....there's only so far that one could consider going down that route before you become immobilized with concern for the implications.
So when we wonder about the choices and the results, we are generally more curious about those river-fork incidents, or what my favorite author, Sir Terry Pratchett, likes to refer to in some of his works as "the Trousers of Time": those junctures at which you find yourself going down one leg of the time stream or the other.
If I had taken this job instead of that one, moved here instead of there, did this with my money instead of that...if, if, if.... See, these are the things that can keep you up at night if you let them--the things that can make even the most satisfied and relaxed person muse on the implications: would I be the same person today? What would be different in my life?
These issues are not of the Frank Capra "It's a Wonderful Life" bent--we do not typically ask ourselves the "what if I were never around" question like George Bailey does...at least not if we have any sort of positive outlook. It takes a thoroughly negative soul to theorize that life would be better without one's very existence, or at least to think that for more than an instant.
No, these are the matters that we usually worried about at the time we made the decision in the first place, or perhaps entertained second thoughts in short order. Lots of those choice points may involve our professional lives, but for plenty of folks the choices might be more about relationships...each of us has a personal list, whether it's one we keep track of or have moved beyond (or ignored, and as Rush sang, "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"). Either way, just as no two people are the same, no two lists would be the same.
Let me bring this back to me for a second...hey, my blog, my rules.
See, I have had lots of times in my life where I've dwelt on the "what ifs" and wondered where I would be with a change here and there, if I'd have any piece of fame, or wealth, or whatever, instead of what would be considered by some on the outside to be a remarkably average middle-aged life.
But--and here's where we reach the sappy emotional payoff ending of what you thought was an otherwise cerebral discussion--I can look at my son and see that everything was done the right way, so long as he was the result.
One more pop culture reference comes into play here: Watchmen, by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons. If you're familiar with the seminal graphic tale (or even the faithful-to-a-fault film), you know that this same realization is part of what saves the world...if you don't know the story by now, the odds that you care about any spoilers will be ridiculously low, so I continue...Dr. Manhattan has dismissed the flawed and self-destructive human race as beneath rescue or redemption--until he understands the beauty of creating unique individual life (even from dark circumstances or amid tragic times) as he gazes upon Laurie (all of which happens on Mars, but let's not get distracted further).
Maybe I could've followed another path, made other choices, but at what cost?
My place in life is a good one right now: my wife, my son, my job, my house, my car, all fit me--the me I have become, have CHOSEN to become...by following my Imperfect Compass, of course.
I look at my son, my captivating nine-year-old boy, and watch him grow into an amazing young man--see him read books I loved at his age, thrill as he develops into quite the soccer player, listen to his evolving appreciation of the world around him, shake my head as he does things without thinking them through...all of it.
The choices that matter are no longer the ones in my past, but the ones I can help him with in the future. I am exactly where I was meant to be, precisely the result of the right choice that got me to him..."and that has made all the difference."
My Choice Song for the Post: "Dancing Nancies" - Dave Matthews Band
(not a better song in mind for the core of this discussion--it's exactly about the question, "could I have been--anyone other than me?")
My iPod's Choice via Shuffle:"Room Full of Mirrors" - Jimi Hendrix
(well, I suppose what's more appropriate than that if you are asking questions of yourself?)
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