Friday, November 30, 2007

Facebook

I'm not sure if Mark Zuckerberg knew what he was creating when he developed f-book or if, like the rising sun it eventually dawned on him months after he created it BUT it might possibly be the most remarkable creation of our civilization. How you ask? What about fire or electricity, or even the computer Mark used to develop f-book. Even the systematic culmination of data in the form of dictionaries, encyclopedias and even Google may not be able to compete with the importance of facebook. What makes me say this?

At our most fundamental level some might say our soul purpose is to preserve and transfer data (in the form of DNA). On a more sophisticated level our purpose is by in large to gather, preserve and transfer data. Universities and colleges are merely data banks that previous generations use to store information only to be passed to the next generation. In essence, institutions such as these are human hard drives and we are all bits of information waiting to write our small piece of data that we accumulate throughout our lives to a greater pool of knowledge. What more are our cities than hubs for us to exchange data? our roads, telephone wire, cable wires and tvs are merely the wiring and hardware necessary for us to pass data back and forth just as a computer would pass data from its CPU to RAM to its hard drives and back. So what component of the human network is facebook?

If you look at facebook at its basic unit (You, me any individual with a profile) it is the digital imprint of your life. As the years progress you'll watch your friends get older through the pictures they post. Since fbook stores every action you take by the end of your life fbook might be ablt to tell you how many times you broke up with your current b/f or g/f, how many different partners you had, how many friends or acquaintances you made. If someone were too look throughout your facebook profile 80 years from now it would give a viewer a description of someone else's life in way that we have never been able to view this data. As it stands now we can only read about people in history books, but people centuries from now will have pictures, feeds, human interactions (for example Einstein poked Franklin D. Roosevelt), people will have a more accurate description of anyone and everyone.

So if everyone is digitally recording their lives then facebook will act as the RAM that identifies our human civilization. Yes the analogy doesn't quite match up but if you think of RAM as the component that gives a PC its context, then facebook does exactly that. A century from now a student could look at my profile and figure out what was popular and what wasn't, what we wore how we dressed, what was considered sexy, what issues were important to us. I wouldn't give fbook the title of hard drive simply because that would imply all of our data as a civilization was somehow being stored by fbook which is far from true. I think we'll have to wait for that great invention but as it stands now, fbook should be regarded as one of the most important inventions of our time solely because it might (one day) have the power to accurately describe how we as a civilization interact , grow and change. Ok i'm tired now...

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Live in your world play in ours

So Sean Taylor from the Washington Redskins has been murdered. One of my friends sent me an article outlining a few occurrences of successful black males who have been killed in what some would call freak or unusual circumstances. But to look at the matter more objectively, the rapid extinction of African American males is nerve wrecking. It isn't anything that the black community hasn't known since I was little, but it is something that has become absurdly more real in the past few years.

I suppose the biggest change has really occurred in the declining population of black males that society would classify as successful. Those men who have amassed a decent amount of wealth (whether it be from sports or tv or private businesses) as well as those who have earned various degrees and have sought out full time jobs to make a decent living have recently been the targets of a lot of homicides. My point is, (and maybe this is the way its always been) the rising rate of homicides where the victims are males from 15-24 are not just gangsters or wanna-be thugs. I say this because too often when we hear these stories on the media and we automatically assume that the victim did something wrong or maybe he had it coming.

Well there are no strong conclusions this time. I only wanted to write a passing thought. A week from now Sean Taylor's name will be appear far less than it does now. They might or might not find his killer (I just can't see the police investing this further than the media demands) and that will determine how long his name stays in the headlines (however we're still talking about that Natalee Holloway for some reason and baby grace who was found already dead). Anyway, if they don't find his killer he will be forgotten in an even shorter time.


well one of these days i'll have to post something full of interesting facts and statistics...

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Yep its like that

I don't care if you lost your virginity as long as you've still got the box it came in.

I'll probably be drinking this weekend...heavily.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Listening to Opera

"I'm sittin' in the phantom, listening to opera gun is my bodyguard call me Kevin Costner" Well I'm not really sitting in a phantom, I'm actually sitting at the mazda dealership waiting for them to finish working on my car. There was a woman in the waiting room with her kid,-- I think the kid was retarded..or should i say 'mentally challenged'. The kid couldn't formulate a full sentence to save his life but he was full of meaningless interjections.

Anyway, I have to venture home in a few weeks, a journey I am none to thrilled about. I suppose it'll be nice to see the family, I just hate those damn tolls. But what are you going to do? These things are expected of you, right. Its the price we pay to be part of any social construct whether it be a family, a school, job etc.

Hmmmmm ok, lets write about something semi important today, no?

I got in a recent argument with one of my black female friends about this whole down low brother issue. It seems to be flaring up in the media a lot, I hear about it on the net, people gossip about it, of course I never hear it through the venues I should, just behind closed doors. My white roommate even made a joke about it...so I suppose this topic is far widespread by now. So I've got two major issues with this whole concept. Firstly, its being used to blame the rising number of HIV cases in black women even though we've got no statistical evidence that their is a correlation between the two AND the same thing is going on in the white community (except these men are being caught in mall bathrooms and a lot of these guys have been very high profile), yet we have no derogatory term for white men who do the same thing nor does the white community completely destroy these men. The senator that got caught (can't remember his name) still has his wife, still has his kids and might have been able to save his job had he denied the scenario from the get go. But I digress, lets get back to the HIV issue.

From what I can gather there is no statistical data on any correlation between down low men and the rise of new HIV cases. People too often assume that because something 'sounds right' or appears to 'make sense' that it must be the case. In general people hate homosexuals, especially the black community, the stigma that HIV is a homosexual disease has largely dissipated however people still feel this disease is their (the homosexual community's) fault. This faulty logic follows as such, we've got black men who are lying and are really bisexual, these black men are really lying to themselves and others and are really just homosexual, they are responsible for the HIV epidemic because they are gay, since they sleep with men who clearly spread the disease and also sleep with women they must be the link between those that would have the disease (gay men) and those that normally wouldn't have the disease (straight women). Whether you want to admit this rationalization or not, more than likely this is how many of people, especially those in the black community think. My problem...where the fuck is the evidence? Could it quite possibly be just another thing other communities are using to further divide us, to pit us against each other. For some reason this issue is funny to everyone else and no one has enough sense to start questioning who coined this derogatory biased term for an action that has occurred since the birth of the human race. Why was the term coined, why single out on black men, where is the statistical data? Where are the facts. We can't even figure out if the earth is getting warmer or colder and its not like the earth is on the down low, but somehow we've established 'well known facts' about a group of people we know nothing about because unlike global warming we don't have handful of dedicated scientists researching this topic. But what I find so remarkable is that if you were to ask people in the black community what the leading factors in the rise of HIV amongst black women, many of them would probably point the finger at brothers in prison OR on the downlow. This phenomenon has become widely accepted without any factual data, however we actually have factual data for global warming (even though it still has determined anything, btw i'm neither for or against this global warming thing its all for the sake of argument) and if you were to ask the same people about global warming you'd get a bunch of mixed answers. Do you see the connection?

I guess this really all comes back to the fact that black males have enough stigma surrounding them already. If we really don't have any statistical data to back it up why take speculation as the truth. Just know its possible maybe even probable but until we know for sure we shouldn't let speculation influence judgement.

Monday, November 5, 2007

I flip more lids than a monkey in a kitchen-- of the mind.

I might look back on this post and laugh my ass off but these are my thoughts now. I'm disgusted by our way of life in America. Just graduating from college I'm having a tough time with some of my most recent revelations. Some of my elders gave the heads up on how things were going to change, but when they bestowed upon me their kind wisdom it was more about working and bills and the type of normal responsibility I've come to terms with since highschool. What everyone failed to mention was how systematic everything would become after college. How locked in and confined we all become. At the moment I refuse to submit to a life of complete mediocrity and at the same time every breath I take is defined by that very same standard. There is nothing so special about me that my life should turn out any better or any worse than the next college educated grad. But, I at least refuse to accept this fate until I've explored all my options.
Often times I go to the mall after work to wait out traffic. It clears my mind. I can walk in a sea of people and feel like I know something about everyone, but know no single person intimately. I walk through a bunch of generalizations. No one is truly unique or different they are all one in the same and from someone else's point of view I am probably no different. It is in this ubiquitous sea of people that I feel a certain comfort but a great disgust. I suppose its because its one of the few places where one can view the full spectrum of age. At work one might see 20-50 year olds, at school one might see ages 18-23 etc. But in the mall you see every age, every race, rich, poor, middle class its all there. Its all the same.
The thing I hate though-- the thing I can't fucking stand is the number of children. I don't know if I just never noticed or if the rate has recently sky rocketed but there are too many kids. Who is having all these damn kids and more importantly why are they having so many kids. What on earth made you decide that you should populate the gene pool with your DNA? What is so fantastic about your personality that you felt you needed to pass it on for another generation? What in your life set you apart that you feel somehow you are entitled to bring another life into this world? What?! because you can? Thats a perfectly good reason, right? Or maybe because you thought it would be cute, or better yet, it was an accident. While the possibility is always there, you and your child are more than likely doomed to a life of mediocrity. In some respects I feel thats why people have kids. They see their failures as a person and hope to better themselves through their children. I'll be the first to stand up and tell each and every single idiotic parent out there "you're setting yourself up for failure". Was it that you ran out of answers and this was the best idea you could forge? What made you stop believing in yourself? What made you produce something that would have a greater precedence than your own existence? That concept in itself lends itself to the idea that you have somehow given up on your life in the hopes of bettering this replica you like to call your child.
But hey, maybe you just needed a few kids to add fulfillment to your life. I won't be a complete hypocrite, I might too one day come to accept my fate and have two fucking kids just like everyone else. But before I lay down on those train tracks I intend to search for a better solution to this pandemic I like to refer to as mediocrity.

"You're gonna carry that weight..."