(concernabouteliminatingtheworldscompleixies)

The iPad has given me a feeling of concern far beyond that of other recent technological innovations. I am finding the central reason to be that Apple has now given a unified face to the notion of simplifying technology's capacities for the sake of convenience and comfort. Let me explain:

-The iPad is no more capable of collecting and distributing data than any iPod Touch or iPhone. The potential for exploration within the iPhone OS is virtually zero unless you are a developer- this will not change at all for the iPad's similar OS. It is the single largest attack upon freeware that I have ever seen, expanding the iPod concept to attempt to monopolize entirely on an individual's necessity for technology.

Disclaimer: The use of my iPod touch and occasional purchases from iTunes are motivated by a diverse use of computing. I use just as much Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google as the next guy.

-The iPad is expensive enough to qualify as a computer purchase, but not expensive enough to prevent the middle class for constantly desiring to purchase one. Apple's perverse genius is especially highlighted in this phenomenon. In five years, the high school class of 2015 will be headed all over our nation and many others outfitted with nothing but iPhones and iPads. Again, the fact that all use of these devices will travel through an Apple-driven channel is an intellectual and cultural overthrow waiting to happen. Apple Prevails.

-Microsoft may carry the VAST majority of the PC market, but if the importance of a personal computer is fading away, what purpose does this stronghold serve? Microsoft's source code has been around for so long that much of it is up for public scrutiny regardless. I am not convinced that Apple will let their trade secrets go so easily. What stops the uneducated masses from letting their human rights get violated by (a) device(s) that is hiding all manner of problematic software?

(/concernabouteliminatingtheworldscomplexities)

I am 'facebook-optional'. But what about my children?

I find myself noticing, with a more personal take on privacy, that I do not possess quite as much of it as I originally found myself to be believing. I certainly do not have any important trade secrets, nor a past of intense moral shame, but I still find myself being included in ‘witness protection’ in my social circles- keeping just as many secrets as secrets are kept against me.

No matter the size of the outlying community, this complex seems to be present in any and all kinds of human networking. Technology is the most modern culprit. Being available for scrutiny online is a necessary evil- just as a socially-competent student would want to keep up with peers, each individual must contribute to the pool of gossip by speaking about themselves in kind. As time wears on, it is logical to expect public technology to follow individuals even before they are aware- I am a member of the last ‘Facebook-optional’ generation. From conception to grave, life will find a way to follow all future life in developed nations.

The inherent question here is simple- does the decrease of privacy in all aspects of society indicate a growth of evil in this nation and many others? It is hard to see the will of a higher power in the matter. Word of mouth once served as the sole source of gossip, and has been the most effective for all of recorded history- television and internet connections are extremely new phenomenon. But speech was not a ‘human’ invention: men and women have spoken to each other, themselves, and their higher powers for the entirety of their existence. The written word became the next medium by which both godly and ungodly would be distributed, followed by many others. This may help answer the question- the more promise a medium shows, the harder the fall from grace. There is no doubt that more technology will come- it is the manner that man utilizes such opportunity that will tell the tale of good or evil , public or private.

The decline of privacy in our world is regrettable- but if man attempts to hearken back to an acceptance that technology is a tool of incredible power, to be treated and relished carefully, this decline may be reversed entirely, or shaped into a more godly progression for the future.

(http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)

Company Figures

• More than 350 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 55 million status updates posted each day
• More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Average User Figures

• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
• Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
• Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
• Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
• Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
• Average user is invited to 3 events per month
• Average user is a member of 12 groups

International Growth

• More than 70 translations available on the site
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
• Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

Platform

• More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
• Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• More than 500,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
• More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users
• More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008
• More than 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook Connect on external websites every month
• Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect

Mobile

• There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
• There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

privacy? why?

The academic pressings of my courses tomorrow, combined with a unfortunate part of the human condition known as exhaustion, will make my commentary on privacy this evening a bit shorter than usual. More may come.

What frustrates my psyche the most about the dying institution of privacy is the nationalistic notion that secrecy is, by default, an institution of vile intentions. Whether the secrets themselves have ill intent or not is beyond the point- the control of knowledge has been vital to a sense of social and intellectual stability for all of recorded history, and it is a portion of the human journey that cannot be eliminated. It would be like attempting to cease the breathing of air, or the fight-or-flight reflex of individuals to react to danger. The capacity for free thought would simply cease to exist without the filter between information sources and the receptors of said information known as privacy. No human is capable of attaining all knowledge, so in a conceptual sense, if all information was available, everywhere, how does one even begin to hold any of it sacred? How does one prioritize it? Where does truth and uselessness get their separation? Pop culture and politics? Morality and maliciousness?

'Only terrorists need keep secrets': only a governmental extremist need agree. You haven't succeeded in suppressing me- this blog is public by CHOICE. For every 'terrorist' stopped in the name of protecting us, an ungodly sum of intellectuals are driven from their capacity to achieve self-actualization, many out of fear, and many more around the world by death itself. A poetic, but undeniably evil, circle of populism.

open-source: hardly a reason to open fire upon good men and selfless intentions

As can be expected from my libertarian beliefs, I find my techie side easily embraces open-sources projects, centrally because their communal efforts are almost guaranteed to be free from deceitful intent, and also because the input of the contributors is consensual and free of the oft-corrupting desire to benefit financially. Because of all this, when I continue to hear and read attacks upon projects like Wikipedia- accusations that the information is not merely inaccurate but fraudulently wrong, I am not just bothered. I actually get a little angry.

What the Wikipedia opposition fears is a legitimate concern for information seekers everywhere- inaccuracy. But what better way to quell inaccuracy when the information in question is open to the entirety of the world for scrutiny, and better yet, correction? The English-language Wikipedia literally has thousands of human beings editing articles every hour of every day, down to the finest detail. The concept of a complete and perfect encyclopedia is just that- a concept, for that kind of perfection cannot be attained, not by this project nor any other. If it is all-or-nothing perfection you seek, be certain to involve yourself when you finally come to the determination that nothing you ever observe will be perfect.

In addition, accountability is built-in to the concept of an open-source project already, despite claims that contributors to things like Wikipedia are uneducated buffoons. Wikipedia is a secondary source of information- much of what is contained there can be traced to other locations through the use of citations, and failure to provide proof of one’s contributions is grounds for a speedy deletion, as I have experienced in the past and have since learned to accept as the proper proof of my know-how. The education of the contributor, though often useful, is not necessary- contribution is welcome from anyone, and benefit can be disseminated to everyone as a result.

Normally, this kind of public-in-entirety project would bash heads against the necessity of privacy and private practice in business and education. However, as mentioned earlier, the consensual nature of the project, combined with a transparent complex of accountability, nullifies the cry that open-source is some kind of collectivist sinbaby from the minds of the uneducated statist masses. If people did not desire the benefits of Wikipedia, or Mozilla Firefox, or Reddit, the projects themselves simply would not exist. Just as the profundity of private efforts are applauded in our capitalistic society, and just as they deserve such through their competitive toils, open-source deserves more credit than it receives today for a similar reason. Instead of functioning for money, they fight simply for their own existence, and their benefit to the intended benefactors.

For the most part, I do not resist efforts to attack Wikipedia when they are brought to my attention- many sources of accurate information exist indeed, and if I am asked to use them instead, I see little reason to jeopardize my accountability for the sake of my conceptual beliefs. But a large group of selfless individuals rests on my continued support of such projects, and I highly doubt that my personal life and my personal exploration of knowledge will see them depart any time in the near future.

reconciling rand with reason: a most challenging test of belief

B = altruism and oppression: not always in bed together

Those who know me in my daily life know that I run a constant gauntlet against the redistribution of wealth and intellect within our society, and I resultantly spend most of my time feeling like the conspiracy theorist of my social circle- I do not merely lay aside crazy ideas about how the government continues to oppress me and my intellectual equals. But it is only in the face of Ayn Rand’s suggestions and the nature of my religious background that I have attempted to justify a society that encourages altruism with little actual execution, especially when corrupt complexes like welfare and library censorship were originally designed with the best ‘intentions’ in mind.

As much of the Western world owes itself to the Christianity started in the cultural generators of European empires, the doctrine of Christ means a great deal to the fundamental nature of our society specifically, even in the face of a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing religious freedom to those within our borders. Seldom does a common individual, at the deepest and most idealistic level, disagree with a simple suggestion of Christ:

"Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." (Matthew 5:42)

It is simple to see and understand that the higher power that much of our nation believes in, in one form of existence or another, wants all of us to play nice. But at what point does the bettering of one man lead to an attack upon another? Where in this complex would the common man’s higher power say, ‘enough’? To phrase the cliché dogma of Christians everywhere, ‘What Would Jesus Do’? Explanations, it seems, come both from the earthly plane and from a more divine origin. Rand attacks the common nature of altruism:

“Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.” (Philosophy: Who Needs It, 61)

Obviously, Rand does not acknowledge a humanitarian capacity for selflessness, neither in the form of charity nor philanthropic intent. This most plainly bears the overtones of the Catholic original sin- the predisposition of being a marked man from crib to coffin. Whether checked against a biblical background or a more common secular one, the logic makes sense: everybody has screwed up over something. (“For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God”, Romans 3:23) As a result, Rand’s argument successfully bears the weight of men destined by design to be sinful- or, in common terms, to make mistakes.

However, does this successfully qualify her statement that true altruism is indeed a bane, nay, a disease upon society’s capacity for liberty because of the possibility that men may act selfishly? It is the ‘all altruism is vile’ blanket that shows a tattering of holes, for exceptions exist to every rule, except the rule that exceptions themselves exist. Rand expresses discontent with the notion of the ‘common good’:

“When “the common good” of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. It is tacitly assumed, in such cases, that “the common good” means “the good of the majority” as against the minority or the individual. Observe the significant fact that that assumption is tacit: even the most collectivized mentalities seem to sense the impossibility of justifying it morally…” (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 20.)

All men may be capable of twisting true altruism into a self-demeaning and oppressive complex, but it cannot be assured. Rand has destroyed the exception- a most simple, but still important, logical fallacy. Altruism in the truest, most conceptual sense is an ideal only ever sought on our planet and never entirely attained, but as remarked upon by Rand’s attack on collectivism, should never be used to oppress in the name of the ‘greater good’. The most grassroots form of altruism known as kindness is far more relevant to the teachings of our higher power, and far less demanding upon society’s intellectual and cultural resources.

reconciling rand with reason: a most challenging test of belief

A = Faith and free will are not yin and yang

No other past intellectual, it seems, has solidified the notion of ‘what you see is what you get’ more so than Ayn Rand, the herald of the objectivist movement. I became acquainted with her approach to the world after pursuing totalitarian literature, in the aftermath of my study of Orwell’s 1984, Zamyatin’s We, and Huxley’s Brave New World. Though I have yet to trudge through Atlas Shrugged, a one-thousand page tomb of objectivist ideals, I found a great amount of intellect contained within one of her very tiniest literary contributions- Anthem, a short dystopian narrative that gave me ample insight for the Randian way of thought. A couple of websites later, I was a veritable born-again objectivist.

I continue to find much of what Rand held dear to be incredibly close to the truth of our world. But the deeper I delve into her literature, the more and more often I find an incredible lack of room for a belief in a higher power, nor for any kind of savior, indeed, any way off this planet and into a better place at all. Needless to say, the intellectual grind began to erode at my emotional and spiritual well-being.

Rand writes of faith:

“Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.” (For The New Intellectual, p 178)

But what of faith causes one to cease trusting the divine gift of free will and surrender the capacity of free thought? This Randian argument is an illogical ploy of black versus white- the entirety of God’s will against the individual will of the objectivity reality of the individual. Like any and all things, a grey area must exist.

Faith is trust, in many ways. Faith can be a cry for help, or a warm intellectual conversation, or a deep and intimate moment. Faith does not erode your ability to make decisions for yourself, nor your capacity to learn from your shortcomings and inevitable mistakes. With the full knowledge that a power greater than yourself will guide the circumstances of the world to compensate for any and all actions that you take, that the entirety of your life will put you in the experience necessary regardless of your socioeconomic, political, religious, or intellectual surroundings- faith merely becomes the knowledge of this phenomenon, never an interruption of it.

So as Rand deviates from the truth by way of atheistic endeavor, does she also prove more than reconcilable through her explanation of free will:

“To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call “human nature,” the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question “to be or not to be” is the question “to think or not to think.”

A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions.” (For the New Intellectual, 120)

The argument that free will is the central and most crucial difference between man and any other animal is not only exactly correct- it is also the most logical tie back to the sanctity of God’s intentions for the human race. The human condition was built in God’s like image…which is the precise reason we inhabit the Earth in the manner that we do- it was created and intended to be our dwelling, not that of dinosaurs or monkeys or any other species. But the more specific target- the capacity for reason- that is the ‘at-will’ institution granted by God to human beings, and Rand stops short of delving anywhere beyond what her own objectivity allowed her to see for herself.

Part of the journey, methinks, is admitting that one can study one’s own reality all they want, because it was dictated to him or her specifically for that reason, but understanding that which is not intended for your spiritual and emotional psyche, or that which is intended for NO MAN to understand, is beyond impossible to discover, let alone comprehend. Rand acknowledges the objective boundary of each man:

“Objectivity begins with the realization that man (including his every attribute and faculty, including his consciousness) is an entity of a specific nature who must act accordingly; that there is no escape from the law of identity, neither in the universe with which he deals nor in the working of his own consciousness, and if he is to acquire knowledge of the first, he must discover the proper method of using the second; that there is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition—and just as he has learned to be guided by objective criteria in making his physical tools, so he must be guided by objective criteria in forming his tools of cognition: his concepts.” (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 110)

However, the divine origin of our capacity for reason remained unknown to Rand for the entirety of her literary livelihood.

I applaud Rand’s remarks of the nature of man’s capacities. I have yet to find a description of life on Earth to be more profound than the objectivist explanation. However, grasping the ‘imaginary numbers’ of the universe’s underpinnings- an existence beyond the capacity of man’s resources, the nature of a being that is more powerful than the whole of our comprehension- is a side of Rand that is embarrassingly terse and concrete. Just as yin and yang are considered opposites, as are the concrete and the abstract portions of our world and beyond. Failure to grasp both is an unbalanced viewpoint of a fascinating and unendingly-complex phenomenon that transcends traditional religion, ridiculous politics, or proletariat entertainment. Faith is the only channel by which a mere man can hope to attain comfort in the face of such awe-inspiring capacities.