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!

Indexing!

For years, my mother and grandmother have been nearly addicted to Indexing (we like to call it "She's doing Dead People again!").  It's a good thing though, because it means there is less for me to do later, and I'm hoping they finish before they depart into the next life.  And even if they don't finish, my older sister is going to take the "mantle" of the Family History work, well, we will make her take the mantle.  This mantle will be pretty easy to bear though, especially because recently I've been exposed to numerous articles summing up the advances in the FamilySearch.org, and now the sight is extremely easy to use and convenient   To most people this might appear as news, but my family and I have been accustomed to these changes since they came out.  However, the new way to use your family tree is quite fascinating.  My Dad currently has an enormous family tree printout on one of our walls.  He filled the wall until he couldn't fit anymore, that would have taken a thousand pages or so.  But one of my young cousins tore half of it off the wall when he became curious as to how it was being held on.  But with the new way that FamilySearch.org organizes your tree, he can even color code it.  It might not be able to fit as much information up as he had before, but at least it will be more readable.  It's amazing, simply amazing, and I know our ancestors are extremely happy with the advances made and being made.

Copycat

This post is property of Thomas Wilkinson, and is a trademark of the fictitious company Thomas Wilkinson Productions. Copy-write laws and Internet Piracy are a big deal in the world we live in today. Not only do you read about it online in various places but it's creeping into our lives.  A couple Sundays ago, I was in a hall meeting with the men on my floor.  The RA was conducting.  We played this little game, where if we agreed with something, we would be on one side of the room, and if we didn't, the other. One of the statements proposed that internet piracy was alright.  Most of the room disagreed, but some agreed.  The ones who agreed looked us in the eye and asked which of us hadn't participated in it at all, and we should practice what we preach.  I stood there happy, never having to deal with it, but I was astonished as I looked around and saw my friends looking ashamedly down at their feet.  It reminded me of the movie Transformers in which there is a computer nerd that gets arrested.  When he is interrogated, he starts asking about the crimes he committed that caused him to be arrested.  He says: "Sure, I've downloaded a few thousand songs, but, who hasn't?!" This statement is more true than we realize.  This is a serious issue, but, who is the issue serious for?  The companies who own the music freak out about it, but they themselves are also stealing from those who actually created the music or creative work that is being pirated.  It's a two-sided coin full of hypocrites...