To become what we are not, we must know what we are. Or another way Know Thyself.

We don’t understand ourselves very well in this society. We especially don’t comprehend how we act as a collective social conscious. Everyone is somebody else’s statistic. It is important to remember that. I am part of somebodies 50% or 10 % or 1%. A number of a part of a number. This is significant because we evaluate our situation based on numbers and often just approximations. We do this to others as well. As long as we do this we will find ourselves on the wrong side of the evolutionary chain.  Why?

Because there is always someone(s) who are bigger, better, stronger, hipper, cuter, wealthier, poorer, sicker, healthier than us and especially me. I need to not be a person who is formed by the minutiae of information that I ingest on a regular basis. But as we regurgitate what we input for personal information devices we become part of the data. We become part of the minutiae.

Most of us try to filter and control what we allow to have access to us to provide our information that we form our life around. The problem with that is how do we find the great pieces of information that exist in the ether of the internet?

There is no door that says “Smart hip people enter here” or “refined sophisticates only please”.  Only a door that says “Enter”. In many ways it is an all or nothing approach to providing ourselves with the data we need to define ourselves.

I know there are people that say you should just disconnect. For me that is just throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Let me propose 3 approaches to data filtering that you may find interesting.

1) Surround yourself with good filters. Find peeps that are good at filtering data, that have new avenues of information that you find useful. Firewall yourself from those that would hack your life. Dump the people that only provide porn. I mean really do you need someone to find you porn?

2) Build relationships with data that works. This may sound silly, but think about it for moment. If you find a great source for data that you like. Become a member, join that forum, engage in the discussion, subscribe to that feed or like that blog. On the same note remember that you have a relationship with data. It is not passive, hate your data and it will hate you. Try it and see. Care about the data that you want.

3) Archive and Backup your data. This is probably one of the biggest disasters of this age. Loss of data. Our  previous history was passed on by oral tradition or by photos or physical books. Today whole generations of pictures, events, lives are lost because we don’t archive and backup. The single most important activity you can do is try to build an oral history to pass on to the next generation. The second most significant action you can take is have an offline, out of your dwelling, backup of the digital pictures, movies, moments and records that exist in digital form of your life.

So this blog is not a complete loss on the novel side, one of the space ships has a circumference of 15 kilometers. Room for several yummy noodle bars.

Be Well – dcd