If gymnastics has taught me one thing, it’s that anything…ANYTHING is possible!

What about now?

My Religion

Good Advice : )

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Sparrows

I throw the last scraps of my sandwich to a sparrow, and two more appear from behind a bush.  They chirp and aim their open beaks toward their mother.  She feeds them crumbs from my sandwich one at a time.  Then, that impossible smile comes onto my face.  The grass suddenly looks greener, the sparrows become real.  I can feel the stone under my hands and the sun on my back.  My senses tingle all at once.  Sometimes the birds set me off, sometimes The Beatles, and other times memories alone.  I feel completely present in the moment, and I wonder to myself, “Life is so infinitely mysterious and beautiful.  I awe at the vastness of what lays before me.  How is it we ever get caught up in the little things when vestiges of eternity greet every gaze.  What if we were purposeful with our eyes, with our ears; listening and looking with deep curiosity and a silent mind?  What if we were purposeful with our hands; taking only actions that stem from our hearts?  What shape might our lives take, and what world would unfold before us if that were our promise?”  I bow my head to the sparrows and turn renewed to my day.  I can feel the earth under me as I take my steps, and the air in me as I take my breaths.  I look out and see that the horizon believes in me, as I do in it.

Short Term Thinking

It’s becoming increasingly evident that the pace of change in our lives is accelerating. Today our phones do things we never thought our computers could, our oldest generation grew up on candle light, and our youngest generation will never know what a fax machine is. These generations are a world apart. Things are changing faster than ever, and it makes planning impossible. How can you plan for a future in which, truly, anything is possible?

It’s forward thinking that got us here. The neo cortex that can imagine a future and the opposable thumbs to build it. But now, how can we think forward, long term? Maybe this increasing pace of change is damaging our ability to consider the distant future, to think responsibly about the long run. What do you think?

  • 10 Plays

This one goes out to Alex Smash

When I was a kid I used to memorize my friends’ phone numbers, and if I needed to call one of them, I’d recall that particular piece of information, punch it into my phone, and talk to my friend. It’s been years since I’ve memorized a phone number. My phone does that for me now. My phone “memorizes,” just like my brain, information. My phone does something my brain used to do…hm. Come to think of it, there’s lots of stuff I don’t memorize since Google came around. The same way our ancestors used wooden hand tools and cloths to extend their bodies, cell phones, computers and the internet, today, extend our minds. But it gets way more interesting…. The picture at the beginning of this post is an image of the internet. The internet is an extension of many minds; hundreds of millions of minds in fact. Plus it’s collective since the information you put there can be obtained and used by other people. And it’s not just storage of information that’s been outsourced to the web. Algorithms are decision-making processes. So computers are making decisions about how to store information, or “they’re prioritizing.” Your news feed on Facebook now posts updates from the friends you have the most interaction with closer to the top of your feed. It’s deciding which information to keep top of mind, and what it should just “forget.” Totally mental, right?! Not yet. Check out Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense Device. And if that doesn’t do it for you, watch IBM’s Watson schooling Jeopardy Legends. So, what do you think comes next?
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When I was a kid I used to memorize my friends’ phone numbers, and if I needed to call one of them, I’d recall that particular piece of information, punch it into my phone, and talk to my friend. It’s been years since I’ve memorized a phone number. My phone does that for me now. My phone “memorizes,” just like my brain, information. My phone does something my brain used to do…hm. Come to think of it, there’s lots of stuff I don’t memorize since Google came around.

The same way our ancestors used wooden hand tools and cloths to extend their bodies, cell phones, computers and the internet, today, extend our minds. But it gets way more interesting….

The picture at the beginning of this post is an image of the internet.

The internet is an extension of many minds; hundreds of millions of minds in fact. Plus it’s collective since the information you put there can be obtained and used by other people. And it’s not just storage of information that’s been outsourced to the web. Algorithms are decision-making processes. So computers are making decisions about how to store information, or “they’re prioritizing.” Your news feed on Facebook now posts updates from the friends you have the most interaction with closer to the top of your feed. It’s deciding which information to keep top of mind, and what it should just “forget.”

Totally mental, right?! Not yet. Check out Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense Device.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, watch IBM’s Watson schooling Jeopardy Legends.

So, what do you think comes next?

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