Step Up The Tech!: August 2011

Sunday, August 28, 2011

LIfe technology: Will Smith on how to achieve goals

The takeaways for me:

Success is democratic--anyone can have it
"Know who you are and what you believe and be willing to die for it--it's that simple."
Dedicate yourself to being better every day
A wall is built one perfectly-laid brick at a time
Make someone else's life better, or you're wasting your time
I can create what I want through belief--thoughts are physical things
Just believe, and then obsessively focus
What's the point of being realistic?
Make a choice and be a cause (not an effect)

Thank you, Will Smith!

"Does the social web kill genius?"

Paul Sutton’s unseen dangers of social media
expresses the fear that

...language may suffer
as we get more and more used to txt speak and fitting as much info as
we can into as smaller number of characters as we can... are we losing
the ability to ‘consider’? And more importantly, are we sacrificing
individual IQ for ‘collective intelligence’? Don’t get me wrong, collective intelligence is extremely powerful. But where is the next Newton, Einstein or Hawking coming
from? Does
the social web kill genius?

Sutton suggests that our innovative powers may be
"sacrificed" for the "collective intelligence" of the social network. If
society's innovative powers are diminished along with the rise of the
social media, that would compromise society's viability,
since social problems demand creative solutions.

A lack of creativity = too high a price to pay for whatever productivity
gains can be found in an increasingly socially-mediated world.

We're on the cusp of a connected world

Evidence is seen in this nifty counter of social networking's growth:

I tell my students that they are lucky to be among the 20% of the planet who are currently connected, and that their responsibility is to create a solid knowledge-base for the un-connected who follow them. There is a Chinese or an African baby today who one day will learn English and something about the world from them! Therefore students should write so clearly and helpfully that billions of their fellow Homo sapiens sapiens can learn beyond what we know. They are not just wiki-ing for an assignment, they are acting as info-nauts, Information Age pioneers, exploring and responsibly reporting the known world!