I just ordered a replacement for yet another lost in-ear earbud for my Sony mdr-ex51 headphones. If you’ve never used one of these, they are little pieces of silicone that barely fit over a nub in the earpiece. A slight tug, when say pulling them out of your pocket, will send them flying across the floor. I’ve tried securing them with superglue, which helps a little, but doesn’t completely prevent the problem.

Sony sells a replacement set for a hefty fee at retain. Fortunately, you can now get replacements for a few dollars online. Why couldn’t they have simply made the groove deeper, or the earbud a little tighter-fitting?

Picture by aussiegall

If the 80s is the decade of excess, and the 90s the decade of irrational exuberance, then this last decade (the 00s?) will surely be remembered as the decade of fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of economic collapse, fear of the future.

The important question is what will the next decade be known as? What will we make it be known for?

It’s easy to just extrapolate and think of extremes: i.e.  either there will be the second great depression, or a return to corporate excess, or a descent into spiraling conflict. These are all possibilities, but they have always been possibilities in every decade, and will always be possibilities that we must assiduously guard against.

It is also tempting to place our hopes on miraculous new breakthroughs that will usher in a new global golden age. Will green energy, biotechnology, and medical science save us in the nick of time? Certainly, there will be an increasing rate of advances and innovations that will disrupt the status quo. However, the past 15 years of the Internet provides a stark picture of how quickly certain things change, and yet how much many things remain the same.

The Internet and globalization promised to create a global village that would ensure world peace, and bring education and the means of self-sufficiency to millions. This, in large part, has actually happened – Indian call centers and Chinese manufacturing have literally helped lift millions of people out of poverty; the largest advance in human history by any stretch. Yet, these two symbols have ironically become either so mundane as to be ignored, or synonymous with evil corporatization.

The problem is that we have removed ourselves from the equation. We expect technology to solve the world’s problems and keep things stable so we can ignore them and get on with our own lives. We have created a global market, but are failing miserably at building global relationships, let alone a global village. When we buy made-in-China goods at Walmart or call our credit card company’s operators in Bangalore, we are practicing drive-through globalization. We have to start thinking more as citizens, not just as consumers.

We need to build meaningful and lasting relationships with people across the world. World peace must be stitched together one relationship at a time. Today, we have the means to instantly communicate with billions of people virtually anywhere, free-of-charge. Yet, we lack the motivation or the conventions to do so. While there is a huge opportunity to provide better contexts and conventions for a global community, it also comes down to our individual participation. Rather than hold back, we need to just jump in – start now, and learn along the way.

So, I humbly propose that we make the next decade the decade of participation. To dedicate ourselves to meaningful social and global participation, in whatever form we choose. Participation puts us in the driver’s seat. We have the means to create the world we want, we just need to realize that we do, and act upon it.

How do you plan to participate more in the world in 2010?

This is what I saw on CNN.com’s homepage this morning:

First, take a close look at the picture of the guy on a cell phone. It looks a little out of place right? Does that look like a citizen complaining about potholes? Looks more like a cell-phone ad to me. The tiny label in the top right says “Jupiter Images”. It’s a stock photo, on CNN? Somehow this just smacks me as plain wrong. When faceless corporate websites use stock images, they come across as inauthentic and soulless. When a top news channel uses them they come across the same way, and it looks amateurish. How is CNN different from a blog now?

Ok, so it was a slow news day, no big deal right? What really shocked me is when I took a closer look at the picture on the left: It looks like a really serious story about important geo-political issues. A protester throwing rocks at police. Iconic. But look at the upper right of that picture, and it says “Getty Images”. It’s a stock photo as well! Now, that throws the whole validity of the story into question. Did people actually clash with police? Is that picture even from Iran? Did protests actually happen? (Well, I’m sure they did, but showing a fake picture doesn’t inspire confidence).

This is a sad trend. I get it that news organizations need to find ways to save money, but I think they are getting close to the line. The foundation of good journalism is trust, and fake pictures erode that trust. They are better off not showing pictures at all.

Anything worth doing is worth doing awesomely.

Halls of Learning by Josiah Mackenzie

One of my personal passions is to drastically improve our means of education. My initial focus is on college-level education, which represents the largest investment we make before we even enter the workforce. According to Forbes, the average public 4 year program costs $18,000 a year (for tuition, fees, and room and board), while private colleges average $37,000 a year, with elite schools costing $50,000 a year and up. This means you’ll need at least $70,000 for a 4 year program. That’s a lot of money.

So what do we get (or think we get) in return for becoming economic slaves? Let’s try to break-down the total received value from a typical 4-year college experience. Here’s my stab at a list:

1. Knowledge, information, and instruction (60%, ~$49K out of a $70K 4-year budget)

Not surprisingly, I'd expect that the main thing I'm paying for is education.

2. Certification (10%, ~$7K)

There's value in graduating from a known school vs. just reading a bunch of books. The school is saying "yes, we think this person is at a known ability level." By attending, you are in-effect buying lifetime membership in the school’s “brand”.

3. Living and social experiences (15%, ~$10K)

For most people, going to college is also learning to live by yourself for the first time, dealing with diverse people, and making important choices in a controlled environment.

4. Inspiration and motivation (5%, ~$3,500)

Having people who you can look up to, and who will motivate you is valuable. So is having a nice environment, the arts, and similarly motivated people around you.

Can any of these be cut or obtained much more cheaply? Could you obtain most of the knowledge for much less than $49K in much less than 4 years? I think the answer is yes, and we need revolutionary changes.

What do you think?

Photo by State Library and Archives of Florida

There are over 6 billion people in the world. Very conservatively speaking, at least 1%, or 60 million, of us must be involved in some kind of creative work. That’s a lot of people. If everyone just had one brilliant idea in their lifetime, say once in 100 years, that should mean 600,000 ideas a year, or at least one brilliant idea every single minute of every day.

So why is progress so darn slow? Why isn’t there a breaking discovery every day in the news? Why are there so few new ideas? Why are so very few new products interesting, or even novel?

I suspect that a big reason is that we have become too synchronized. Too much into the herd mentality. We aren’t venturing outside the bounds of what has been done before. Rerunning the same ideas over and over again instead of testing new ones.

For the only known sentient beings in the universe, this is truly sad.

Ok, *sucks* is a little strong. It was a somewhat enjoyable movie, but fell very short of what it should have been. It should have been an extraordinary movie. Instead, the producers chose the safe and easy route. They gave us a predictable, formulaic film. Take great special effects, uni-dimensional and unbelievable characters, every Star Trek cliché ever conceived, and jam it into 2 hours. That’s J.J. Abram’s new Star Trek. From a business standpoint, this is brilliant: Play it safe, don’t disappoint the fans, start a new franchise and set the stage for numerous sequels. But since when has Star Trek been about playing it safe? When has it been about *not* pushing the frontiers of our consciousness?

This film neither pushed any frontiers, nor contributed any new ideas, to Star Trek or to sci-fi in general. I’m sorry, but I expected a lot more, especially from J.J. Abrams.

Everything posted on the net should be dated. That way, when someone searches for something like "macbook review" it will be easy to tell which generation of device is being talked about.