Category: business

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Distraction – Internet – Productivity – or: Us?

In recent years documentaries and books as well as blog articles tell us how disruptive the internet is to our work ethics, how problematic it has become for people to constantly check their phones and so on social media about their latest ratings, the newest trend, even if only purported, or the most scary news.

Of course, with any new technology, it is added, this means we should be careful, not to say beware: dreadful things are happening, people become dumb, or dumber through the internet, more distracted, less able to focus.

But as I posted before, history can teach us: neither these warnings nor the idea of a new technology or medium being dangerous to the average person’s mind is really new.
When Gutenberg invented printing, the church and other ‘forward thinkers’ predicted dreadful consequences, for minds as well as morals of the population.
When radio came first into being, it was a wide-spread fear that those waves would damage brains or thinking or make impotent or even criminal.
When TV arrived on the horizon and was made available to the masses, the same happened, all over again.

The presumptions in all of this are:

  • There’s an actual average level of the mind of humans that can be damaged or ‘pulled to depths of iniquity’.
  • There’s a crucial point where certain kinds of knowledge or insight might cause the ‘fall from grace’ to happen again, the paradise-situation and first sin all over again: eat the fruit of enlightenment or insight and you will be disgraced.

What all of these prognosticators disregard sadly, are some basic truths of history and humans that are not all nice to look at but still true:

  • For thousands of years dreadful crimes have been committed, cruelty and torture, by the inquisition, an institution of the Christian church, as well as feudal landlords, have inflicted pain and suffering and death on innocent people.
  • Wars have caused actions of killing and torture the average mind shudders at. Rape, hunger, sophisticated torturing, you name it. And most of the time mankind exists, there was no internet, no social media and no radio, books or TV around.
  • People, in throngs, used to visit public hangings and punishment that was institiuonalised torture, many a scary movie these days would shy away from depicting.
  • Women were called ‘witches’ and tortured and burnt at the stake long before any of the abovementioned media were around, again, no radio, no books, no TV or internet.
  • People always have exchanged sensations, told stories, true or false, ‘spun yarns’ and – looked for excitement in an often too boring reality.
  • The ballads that were sung, the shallower of the plays in mass theatre productions, ‘wall newspapers’ that would pay tribute to any of the today’s tabloids, were in abundance long before analogue or digital technology were even thought of.

If anything, in many parts of the world with higher education levels and more well-paid jobs available, cruelties have decreased – except for times of war, which ‘behave’ according to precedent – and according to crimes’ statistical records that cover around two centuries now.

So, I like to put it rather like this, as someone said somewhere a couple of years ago:
‘Smart, educated people will smartly use and become more smart with using media, dumb ones will become dumber.’

It means responsibility again, too:
the better we ourselves learn to discern and also teach our children discretion of good or bad or the best media, the more hope is in it, for all.

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Being ‘Right’ – or Being Yourself – and Be Human

For a long time I have thought about and observed what people do, what they think, what they fear at times, what makes them cry, what makes them laugh – and I have the strong impression that in many cultures emotion, as a concept, and emotions as individual ‘moving aspects’ in life are highly underestimated.

Partly, any culture in the world has its own rules about what is accepted behaviour and which emotions are acceptable to display. Often there are differences between the sexes in these rules. In patriarchal societies, very often for women to become angry or furious, enraged and loud, is considered ‘unladylike’, at least. In former times, women often were condemned for being crazy and eventually were locked up.

On the other hand for men, being sensitive and easily moved to tears in such societies can mean to be considered disturbed of mind or at least a ‘problematic case’.

We have come a long way, partly because psychology and its insights helped. Partly, because social scientists looked closer at those rules. Because people ask and asked questions and started doubting customary ‘truths’.

We know more about what is human, what is perhaps just this ‘little wonderful difference’, that the famous French saying puts so nicely into perspective.

But many people out there believe, that everybody should be more or less the same, do more or less the same things and then will live happily and healthily ever after.
This is not true. Although we are human beings and there exist lots of similarities, as regards cultural tradition, region of birth and upbringing, gender and family – yet in detail each and everyone of us is as unique as their fingerprints.

As a renowned food chemist put it (paraphrase):
“Many health rules are built like this: When they started researching who had the healthiest feet in the country and then found that such people usually wore size 32 shoes, they made it a rule that everyone should wear size 32 shoes. But if your feet are bigger, this rule won’t fit you.”

Therefore it can be very important, to observe these two things:
Learn more about emotions, as Daniel Goleman called it first, develop your EQ, the emotional intelligence, as opposed to the IQ. The IQ tests certain functions of the brain, bluntly put, analytical thinking.
But humans are more complex than just their IQ results. For quite some time, IQ tests are ‘out of fashion’, and rightly so.

Another problematic ‘fashion for behaviour’, for ‘personality traits’, if any, in certain countries, especially in polite society, for centuries, has been taken from business:
be always cool, calm and collected so as not to appear too eager about a deal.
This almost inhuman dictum may well be at the root for many apparent ‘disorders’ being diagnosed these days, in children or adults.

Secondly, question rules that force you to be, or feel, or behave outwardly what you do not feel inside, at all.
If people have been treated with electric shock therapy for certain ‘mental disorders’ in the past century, it is a ‘shocking’ way to reveal the underlying dogma:
be right, be like everyone else, otherwise you will be ‘made to fit in’.

Another fine simile for this is the story of the farmer, who thought it might be interesting to put a piglet in a box so it would grow into a square pig. That worked nicely.
But one day, the farmer opened the box to take his square pig to market – and with a little ‘plop’ it rounded out again and was natural and pig-like.

So, I think, find out what and how you are, apart from the general rule or rules and be true to yourself, to become human and perhaps healthier than ever before.

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Computers, Advertisements and Pop-ups – Madness!

I’ve been around computers and digital devices for over 25 years, actively using all kinds of software, writing simple scripts, editing digital video, audio and images; you name it. As many people around the globe have these days.
If you are used to a certain way of dealing with your applications, have got used to a workflow and focus of your own, the one thing most annoying is to be interrupted at will, without your permission.

Imagine someone coming up to your desk and just wilfully blocking your view onto the screen the second you click somewhere important – and worst case scenario might be a crash and hours of work lost.

It drives me mad with anger at many of the latest product designers and advertisers who think popping up little windows and dialogues in your face at any possible moment is a nice way of letting you know about what they think important…

When I use my computer I rarely sit in front of the screen, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for things to happen…
I have an agenda, if I sit in front of my screen.
If I need to be entertained by ‘moving images’, I go to the cinema, or my TV/video-playback device.

If there’s anyone of the responsible personnel out there reading this, from the bottom of my heart, I implore all of you advertisers, web designers and software engineers, think it over:
perhaps that little window or dialogue could be made to appear somewhere noticeable without interrupting my workflow?

I’m sure you can think of something….

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Numbers, Business – Everywhere: Love?

People for quite some time, even more so since WW II and the global ‘advent’ of an apparently global culture – have embraced the idea that business is good. More business is better. Which basically means: the higher the numbers, the better.

This leads to the rather sad realization that many people also treat love that way: they may not know better, but they act as if numbers are at the bottom of it. Love the most beautiful, the richest, the most handsome, the loudest, funniest or something else …est.

And the surface too often is taken for the real stuff: whatever someone says is taken at its face value, it seems as long as the image is ‘fitting’ the mainstream, the fashion, the – numbers, all’s well.

Particularly irritating at times is the behaviour of grown-ups, who seem to have no sense of their individual value, who think that having fun can have one connotation only – and that it is also fine to listen to what the majority apparently has to ‘say’ about these matters.

Who are constantly testing their market value by flirtatious behaviour or coy looks and moves – and seem to overlook completely, that they are transformed into a product, on ‘the market’… Almost seize to be human, and loose all individual character in the process, because they try so hard to be ‘part of the crowd’, the majority. Fulfil general ideas, instead of being a person.

So, what people believe, seems to amount to this:

  • The majority, it is taken for granted, is always right.
  • Fashion or what people take for it, the mainstream, is the best thing to have – or be. Or at least be part of.
  • The majority states that having fun means, more of everything is better – even in love. Or what they take for it.
  • If one conquers ever so many more and new people every other day, not only will certain others look up to them – it will make life so much more interesting and – fun…

All these assumptions are based on  the idea of numbers: and since human beings are not ‘working’ by numbers alone or even mainly – these ideas will never result in what many people are looking for.
Instead, the boredom and the uneasiness continue – and become more. More people, more exciting moments become necessary to fill the void, scare away fear or anger –  and less and less insights into their own soul, true needs or sorrows are possible.

What will be impossible to find, are fulfilment and the inner calm of ‘having arrived’.  The ultimate contentment.
These things can be found only inside, not out.

Author’s Note

As is easily the case with people of limited perception and imagination, an article like the above seems to be easily misunderstood…

There are so many kind and funny and considerate humans around who are a bit flirtatious just for fun. Nothing whatever to say against that. But anyone who’s looked a little more closely also knows those who apparently keep a record. Who constantly need to prove something. Preferably using all around as an enforced audience. Especially in a workplace with confined spaces where ignoring them gracefully is out of the question.

This text is not applicable to ‘all and sundry’.

But, as I mentioned, not everyone’s experience is a broad one… and people still too often ‘jump to conclusions’…

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Age, Business, Numbers, Money – and the Age Myth

How do we love? By numbers: the best, the highest, the most… something – or another.
How do we judge? By the average, the mainstream, the numbers, again: if the majority agrees it must be right.
Right? Wrong.
The majority is sure that after a certain age people do not find jobs easily because their age makes them less fit for it – the biggest myth: it’s again the numbers, the numbers of profit creating opinion, nothing else.

Majority. Hm.
In ancient Rome the majority agreed that having gladiator fights, and fights between predatory animals and humans in an arena were good.
In ancient Rome the majority agreed that Christians were ‘of the devil’ and should not only die – but be tortured in the arena, for the majority’s amusement.

These days, we agree that this is inhuman and against the laws of nature.

But still, we seem to think in numbers:
the highest, the most, the majority.
Right?
Wrong.

Business in these days is at the bottom of such ideas. What is most profitable, is the most agreeable. But not just profitable for someone – or many.
But profitable for those that have the most money, and want more.

Who determine the profit by paying less and less wages, by making ‘global’ pressure responsible for less and less human conditions.

I am lucky, in the middle of Europe. I not only have a job, but I am paid according to very humane laws and ideas.
I like my work – and I am also lucky in other ways, pertaining to my surroundings.

But the ideas that go around about age being a problem in workplaces – and that people after a certain age are less likely to find new jobs due to their age, create this strange myth about age being the underlying problem, as in, unfitness.

In actual fact, the problem is altogether different: Age makes people experienced, and, even more importantly, they are not as easily fooled into tasks and ideas they know about more with – age.
They have acquired more and more skills over the years and thus they might cost more wages – which is against the law of profit.

So, actually, the numbers, business and the law of profit determine ideas of the majority.

As someone also called it aptly a few years ago:
“It’s not public opinion – it’s published opinion.”

And even if people are repeating it over and over again, have for decades now, that makes it not any more true:

Age is not the problem, numbers are.

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