CONNECTED

With a recomndation of a friend I started to read Cal Newport's new book DEEP WORK. The most striking question at the beginning of the book was : "Does it really help my work to be constantly connected.".

How often do we have to be connected? Difficult question..

Long distance communication started with letters carried by travellers and improved by the professional operations by post offices . The time elapsed to carry the information inside the envelope   was related with its distance. The farther the receiver the longer time was needed.

This continued until the invention of the telegramme. Samuel Morse sent an information at electric speed in 1844. But still there was the need of a postman to carry the message to the receiver by foot taking hours..

Than came instant voice communication by Graham Bell telephone in 1876. Followed by mass broadcasting invention by Gugliemo Marconi the radio in 1895.

Telex machine was a distant teleprinter not as fast as voice communication but you have message printed onto a paper that you elaborate. The machine was working even in off hours. Its speed was at the beginning equal to the person typewriting skill. 10 finger writing was important as you were paying the telex connection by seconds. Two way communication was possible.  Machines improved to a quicker transfer of information by pre-punched tapes working similarly to Jacquard loom automation. In nineteen seventees the computerized telex machines allow the messanger to pre-write his message to the screen and send it afterwards. Massages started to be stored in machines in spite of paper.

The messaging speed increased tents of fold by voice-electronic combination devices known as facsimile. In a ess than a minute you were able to send a4 page writing or drawing or photographs.

You still need a machine ,electric power and telephone connection.

In eighties "pager" was able to send instant messages to portable smal rechargeable devices. The message was delivered by phone to the post office operator. Than was transferred to the pager in a minutes . Alerting you by beeping and trembling. This invention freed people to stay at the office waiting a call. In spite hiring a secretary ...

Internet connection of the personal computers through telephone lines by dial up system was the last stage in messaging at electric speed. Making the communication ever cheaper and quicker.

In nineteenninties Cellular car phones was than allowing to make a phone call while driving and making communication easier and freeing people of dieing batteries. As batteries improved cellular phones shrinked to a level to be carried in a pocket.

The appearance of first smart phones at beginning of the new millenia made people read their messages throughout their mobile phones tiny screens.

I recon the first smart phones beeping when a new message was received.How a showy was in the community!

Let me return the the book  that I was reading , where the author now is pretanding that such a speedy messaging is making us less productive and less creative because such continuous poke of messages are distracting us and making difficult to be concentrated in a difficult tasks.

Avram Aji
24.06.2020

MODERN FEARS AND BIASES

We are accustomed to hear and read various disasters all over the world constantly. Fires , hurricanes, landslides, avalanches , floods , pandemics , eruption of volcanoes, tsunamis , earthquakes , wars, terror attacks , murders are the main subjects of actual social media and press. Adding conspiracy theories in it makes them much more attractive. 

Under so much misinformation from our surrounding the new generation became fearful of the following: 

-MEDICATION , MEDICINES ,VACCINES : debilitating the immune system , creating worse side effects in a long run.

-MICROWAVE OVENS : spreading carcinogenic waves.

-FERTILIZERS ,PETICIDES AND RESIDUES: excessive usage is a fact. But organic farming is far to suffice 8 billion world. Residual effect is exaggerated and exacerbated by scholars, private laboratories and coward authorities.

-GMO GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM : carcinogenic

-HIBRID SEEDS

-DETERGENTS AND OTHER CLEANSING SUBSTANCES : polluting the environment

-PLASTIC RECIPIENTS AND PARAPHERNALIA 

-CONVENTIONAL SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION SYSTEM : not very proper

-NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS : spreading radioactivity

-WIND TURBINES, killing birds, making noise

-5G INTERNET WAVES , disrupting brain

-HYDROELECTRIC POWER STATION , changing the microclimate

Most of the above list articles are not within the scope our expertise if not all. Newspapers, TV's and social media can only atract followers if only delivers  outrageous information, hence none of us will be interested to hear about there was not any earthquake today nor any car accidents , explosion , rape , murder . We are under attack of bad news only most of the time.

Let's think about the electricity that we consume. None of the powers stations are free from environmental disruption. Coal burning is polluting the air, Hydroelectricity is changing the microclimate, nuclear fission is producing radioactivity and there is no safe place for its residues, wind turbines are killing the bees , while producing solar panels there is an invironmental residues et cetera..

But it is sure that we can not live without electricity. Can we ?

Avram Aji
11.06.2020

TRUTH - Hector Macdonald

This is a marvellous , and very recently published book. I highly recommend to everybody. There is not only one and eternel thruth but different views in every fact. Below you have few fragments.

THE QUINOA REDISCOVERED...

The writer start with the fact quinoa consumption icrease in recent years. Gluten intolerance and coeliac patients were extremely enthusastic of this new cereal not hurting them but beingly highly nutritious.The consumption exploded and trippled its price. Poor Peruvians an Bolivians were not anymore able to buy it

Few sensitive Europeans were thinking lik: “The more you love quinoa, the more you hurt Peruvians and Bolivians”

The income of the farmers trippled. Those who used to have only Quinoa in thier daily life started to rejoice the variety of different foods.

THE INTERNET   TRUTH

“The Internet makes the world’s knowledge widely available.
The Internet accelerates the spread of misinformation and hatred.”

“Competing truths inform our mindsets, and our mindsets determine our subsequent choices and actions. We vote, shop, work, cooperate and fight according to what we believe to be true. Some truths stay with us for life, determining the most important choices we make and defining the very nature of our character. Whether we are faced with a police shooting, a company mission statement, a group of refugees, a presidential candidate, a holy book, a scientific finding, a contentious statue or a natural disaster, our response–which may be dramatic, transformative or violent–will stem from our mindset.”

BREST CANCER AND PREGNANCY  CORRELATION

“To keep things simple, we can think about three types of communicators:
Advocates: selecting competing truths that create a reasonably accurate impression of reality in order to achieve a constructive goal.
Misinformers: innocently propagating competing truths that unintentionally distort reality.
Misleaders: deliberately deploying competing truths to create an impression of reality that they know is not true.”


JOHN KENNEDY

“Gross National Product, ‘It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

Avram Aji
11.06.2020