Our Society

Many believe that it is the Law that protects our freedom.  I think the law itself does not protect us, but a combination of the law with various consequences for actions, and human nature.  If there is a guideline set that is standard, most people will choose to obey it.  At the beginning of our country, the ethical code of the people became the law, but as time has gone on (hundreds of years), society and it's values change.  We are in the midst of that change, where things we thought would never be "OK" and now deemed "OK" and "not a big deal" by the majority of society.  It's a dangerous world, and now with the law not keeping us from doing things we know are wrong, what does?  Our own code of ethics.  When it comes down to it, we are our best filters and governors.  If we don't want to see something everybody else is seeing, we can turn away and "filter" it out.  If we don't want to do something everybody else is doing, most often we can refuse to do it.  We have the ability to see right from wrong, and we have the ability to make choices.  Like Smokey the Bear, we are also the only ones who can prevent the wildfires that would destroy our morals within our own souls.

Tweeting Conference

I had an interesting experience this weekend.  I decided to "tweet" during General Conference.  I normally wouldn't do such a thing due to my lack of a twitter, but I consented and tried it out.  It was a positive experience for me, one in which I was able to better pay attention to the speakers by tweeting my thoughts and the cool quotes I heard.  It caused me to want to write things down too, so for the first time in my life, I took "good" notes during conference.  Most of the time I would tweet from my phone, so while I was at the conference center (I was there for two sessions) I never really got distracted by having my phone out for more than a few seconds.  At home though, I was able to read through the tweets about it during the sessions, it helped a lot especially when I missed a quote or something.  While at the Conference Center though, I wouldn't be able to keep track of the feed, but I would get notifications as people tweeted directly at me about them, "favorited" them, or "retweeted" them.  It was a good time.  I paid better attention than most of my family, and got significantly more out of it than I would have without doing it.

MMORPG's!

I love playing video games.  I like to play all sorts of them! When I was younger, I didn't need a friend to play with me.  I would play for extensive periods of time solving puzzles, beating bad guys, and finishing different games.  I would arise early to play, as well as go to bed late because I was playing them.  This I did purely for the fun of playing, and the sheer wonder of the creation of them, the stories they held, and the experience I had while playing.  But now, I cannot really sit and play a video game by myself.  I'm not all that sure why, I just become sick of them after awhile, and I need to share the experience with someone.  Even the MMORPG's.  I now normally play with a group of friends, either in my neighborhood, or my best "buds" from across town.  We make memories playing them and have more inside jokes than I can list on all my fingers and toes!  I get too bored very quickly while by myself.  Some of my relatives however, are hooked.  Everything in their schedule that is not the game, revolves around the time set aside to play the game.  It's very destructive, and I'm very worried about them.  Their habit is similar to what I used to have, but more extreme (don't get me wrong, I still love playing video games).  Somehow I recognized that real life can be better, and they have yet to realize what they are cheating themselves out of.  I now go to spend time with them and show them what life can really do for you.

Internet Piracy!

Behavior

People fascinate me.  Whether they are arguing, working together, or suffering together, they fascinate me.  They are always progressing in one form or another and are discovering new things.  But how does society change?  Clay Shirky said that "Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technology, it happens when society adopts new behaviors."  So it doesn't matter what technology you've got, the people cause the revolution through their behaviors.  I read a lot about how technology has been used to further our race, and how it has been the critical tool for accomplishing certain feats that have gone down in history or have changed the course of a nation.  It wasn't because of the technology, it was by the technology that this was accomplished.  The need and desire was there, the technology just made it faster and more possible than before.  Clay Shirky also said that the future of our people is on the shoulders of those who take the present for granted.  It is true, because they will seek innovation because nothing seems new to them.  But it won't be any easy change, Douglas Adams said this about the views of society:

"I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

It is always a constant struggle, as time goes on, new things happen, and revolutions and protests are accomplished that lead to better lives.  After reading about a lot of success stories of change in the past ten years, they couldn't have happened any earlier.  The technology to accomplish it didn't exist, but the desire did.  Technology didn't cause the people to revolt/evolve, they did it because of the same reasons they always did.

Technology, guided by God?

One of the most interesting things I've ever seen is the rapid advancement of technology.  It seems that once a need arises, it is quickly solved by some advancement in technology inadvertently.  My favorite example of this is the Granite Vault (used for storing billions of genealogical records) in Salt Lake City for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  It seems like every time they hit a rut/divot in the road when it comes to storing the records, a new advancement was made, and once they outgrew that, another was made!  It's incredible!  The Lord really cares about the affairs of man, and if he wants something done, he's going to get it done.  He works in mysterious ways that are also sometimes small and simple.  Technology can be one of those mysterious ways, and how people use it could be the small and simple ones.  There is a plan for each of us, and the Lord is definitely guiding it. So, I would not be opposed to the idea of The Lord need hover-boards and flying cars to continue his work.

Open Sesame!

Redundancy is annoying.  I'm very forgetful, and oftentimes will lose a homework assignment, when I do, it really stinks, because I have to do it all again from scratch.  And being the procrastinator I am and already having a lot of homework, it's very difficult and lame.  I already did it once and learned what I needed to learn, so why should I have to do it again? Open source code exists for this very reason.  It helps programmer in a professional setting and prevents them from wasting time and allows people to share their work with the world.  However, I don't think everything should be open source, because then people would stop making money, and then the market for computers and programs would die (or be really maimed).  This would be caused by the lack of desire to improve and maintain them would disappear.  So we need both.  But what should be open source, and what shouldn't?  That's a very tough question.  Very tough.  A simplistic and cheesy answer suggests that anything not already being commercially advertised.  Or even simple code that just helps write some functions that can be kind of tricky, but I don't really know.  I'm just grateful some people do!  Because it makes my (professional) life easier and prevents me from making the "I love <3 redundancy!" mistake.  So, we need both kinds of code to make the world go round!