Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Facebook

I've never had a relationship in this age of Facebook. It's been a while since I had a serious relationship anyway. I hate the idea of dating in the Facebook era because I might know too much about the person I'm dating too soon. Let's say I meet a girl and we have mutual initial attraction. I think she's interesting, I want to get to know her. We become Facebook friends and then I find out a bunch of things I don't like about her. Now I'm starting to become less attracted to her. Eventually it wanes to the point of being gone.

This is a possible scenario. I could after Facebook, become more attracted to her. I might find her intriguing. She might reveal just enough information about herself, but not too much and get me interested.

I keep my privacy settings on Facebook pretty high. Some people let anyone see their wall and information. Some people treat it like twitter or their online blog and pour out their deepest emotions. I prefer to use it to keep in touch with friends. I'm highly opinionated but I'm afraid letting out my opinions on Facebook might hurt my future job hunting prospects if a potential employer were to find it out and dissuade them from hiring me. This really scares me. I don't want to lose a job over an angry thought I had on my mind at one particular moment.

I have become kind of obsessed with Facebook recently. I can see why so many millions of young people are addicted to it. It's the number 2 site on the internet now. Wow. It beat yahoo and msn. It's popularity is incredible, I mean everyone uses Facebook. Will it be a fad like Myspace was? I don't know, I think Facebook is hear to stay at least for a while. But who knows, the web is very fickle.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

So I finally surrendered to Facebook

I wanted to wait as long as I could but I got hit with a technical question at work about how Facebook works by an older fellow, so I then realized that I have to know how it works. I was reading about Facebook's effects on relationships recently and the whole new layer of complexity that it brings to our already complex lives and relationships. I also got my first Facebook rejection when I had wrote a comment on a friend's wall that accidently revealed information about him he didn't want his other friends to see. So he "unfriended" me.

I got pissed because he didn't tell me why he did that at first and I only found out days later. It is making me think too about the amount of information out there we all see. Do I want ALL my "friends" on Facebook to be able to see what everyone writes? The conflict between my older friends who might know things about me that, let's say I don't want my newer, or my professional friends to know about is a constant worry. I don't want to be in the position of having to obsessively monitor everything said about me on Facebook 24/7.

I didn't put my real name up and I created an email address just for registering on Facebook so that no one can track me down. I prefer to use this only for newer and professional relationships I have and wish to not include most of the older friends from my past, some of whom aren't even on Facebook.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Confucious

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

A 1984ish nightmare...


Being involved in the technology industry I see the forefront of all the innovations on the technological cusp. Some of it scares me, like for example, targeted advertising using the information about you on the internet. Imagine a person has a bad gambling addiction, he or she frequents gambling sites and pursues its different avenues. This is tracked and known by advertisers who then bombard that person with advertising about gambling related activities when they are online. Let's say that the person wants to stop gambling, realizing it has become an addiction and is actively mustering up the courage to fight its addictive power.

Is is therefore morally wrong for the advertisers to be feeding this person with the addiction that they know exists and is very powerful? For an advertiser of any stripe it is a dream come true: being able to target specific people customizable ads catered to that person's wants. When the ads are in the back of a magazine or in a place you could frequent is one thing, but when it can follow you and hit you when you least expect it is another level entirely. These are moral issues that technology is forcing us to glance at for a very long time.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Being a man sometimes hurts.

There is this feeling I get of shame sometimes just by being born male. I get it when I feel certain vibes mostly from women. It's that look I get and that attitude I get when I'm around women for the first time usually. That look that says "oh great, here comes another horny single guy. I hope he doesn't try to hit on me." It's the assumption that because I'm a guy, I think with my dick and that I'm a womanizer, and therefore an annoyance.

I hate this vibe I get from some women, and even from certain types of men too. It puts me in the position of having to prove to everyone that I'm not that type of guy and that I am different.

Being a single guy can be tough, there is so much open discrimination out there. Single women are treated like royalty. They are pampered beyond belief and put on a pedestal. They are always in demand. They get ladies night out and discount drinks and all sorts of benefits just by being born female. Single guys on the other hand, are treated as an annoyance, a pest, like dirty over populated rats. Every guy knows what I'm talking about. We have to pay more to get into clubs and organizations and we often need a woman just to get in in the first place.

Of coarse this is a reaction to supply and demand, I know that. Sometimes I'm jealous of the privileges that women get. It's not a man's world anymore, at least not in the U.S. Maybe if there was a abundance of single ladies everywhere than that would turn the tables, but until then it's hard out there for a pimp, err, I mean a man.

Religion is the easy target but..

How about "the man," whoever he is? I'll have more on this later.

Here's a joke: Humaitarians doing what doesn't exist because of greed. Ha ha.

Imagine that. It does exist and is a necessity. I don't want to get the impression that I'm all about religion. I certainly am a lot when it comes to morality and science but politics and business are also a fundamental part of our society and impact all of us.

It's not profitable to do certain things, certain needs must be taken care of. So we have businesses doing what ever is profitable, which might be truly dedicated to helping people, but which might be hurting people and getting rich off of it. Who am I to say that it's wrong to do what ever is clever to get paid? I totally understand monetary motivation. It's what fuels the world's economy and you have to have some of it.

But not all of it, and we have to have certain levels of decency when it comes to what corporations and do. Imagine a world where we are all slaves to monolithic corporations that have no borders and can shift faces very fast. I'd rather not. I'd rather not have to at least.

We have rules of decency regarding sex don't we? You are suppose to respect each others' spouses, right? Of coarse you are and that serves a useful purpose. And you are suppose not do to others what you wouldn't want done to you, right? I don't think that failing to meet moral standards is sin, in the divine respect, but it should carry the social stigma that it's definitely wrong. And for the category higher, why not some man-made laws to enforce them? Well how 'bout that.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

What We Must Keep In the Public Realm

It occurred to me recently of the idea of what should the balance be between believing what the truth most likely is: There is a God and that one religion is true or; there isn't a God at all and that we exist from natural processes with no Divine interference.

I think that we must keep doubt about any one religion being true and favor the belief that there most likely isn't a God based on the evidence available, and that we should conduct ourselves to be the most moral society possible due to the non-existence of divine authority and morality.

Wow what a sentence.

We must keep this in the public realm, and not have old superstition and religious ideas that are outdated, to being the main state of mind. That doesn't mean there can't be knowledge of religion or discussion about it, even favorably. It is only to make sure there is no religious domination over government and we can have a free and open media without religious filters in it. (Not to mention any corporate monopoly or domination over it either)

Why is this not a good idea?

Happy New Year's

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