Privacy – or lack thereof – online
I haven’t verified these statistics, nor do I plan to, but it is nice to know I’m not losing much by not using Facebook and Google – as in losing privacy and personal information.
iPad owners are selfish douchebags
Maybe douchebags is a bit harsh, and reflects my own personal prejudice against Apple fanboys. A study, however, says that iPad owners are perceived as “selfish elitists.” According to this article:
According to a new study the psychological profile of iPad owners can be summed up as “selfish elites” while have-not critics are “independent geeks.”
iPad owners tend to be:
six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds
and:
MyType speculates that one factor could be the device’s high price tag, and because screen-bound workaholics are likely to want another screen with which to stay engaged. The urge to include another screen in one’s life correlates strongly to seeing value in connecting to information in a new way, which is basically a nice way of saying what a lot of people were saying when the iPad was released: What do you need one for, really?
Tags:
America,
Apple,
article,
elitists,
Facebook,
Fanboys,
Google,
government,
infographic,
internet,
iPad,
opinion,
privacy,
quotation,
science,
Social psychology,
society,
study
Knowledge is dangerous
Knowledge – the personal, non-bookish kind – should, in my opinion, be acquired strictly on a need-to-know basis. You can’t unring a bell, as the saying goes. I personally have examples where I know something about someone, and they don’t know that I know, and like it or not, it affectsthe dynamic of our interaction. Of course I’m the only one between us who knows this, and the knowledge is something neither good nor bad; it’s not something worth bringing up and discussing. So while I sit and ponder and write about this, they’re blissful in their ignorance of the matter.
Tags:
ignorance,
knowledge,
life,
opinion,
society,
Unring the bell
Overwhelmed by choice
An edited version of a proposal for study I wrote up for a Ph.D. program I applied to (and didn’t get in to):
To keep track or not…that is the question
There’s a part of me that wants to record things, like the books I’ve read and when (which I do record), the movies I’ve seen and when (also record), and, most of all, the people I’ve met and know.
I’ve met people in various circumstances and gotten to know them to varying degrees. From one acquiantance to deep friendships of several years, this part of me wants to record it all, maybe to look back and reminisce later, or maybe for others to see after I’m gone.
Then another part of me simply asks “What’s the point?” It’s all going to get left behind anyway, right? Is there something all this is accumulating to? There isn’t. They’re just experiences, and I should enjoy them as individual ones, instead of searching for any patterns or meanings in them.
Which part do I listen to?
Tags:
acquaintance,
books,
essay,
Friends,
life,
movies,
opinion,
Overwhelmed by choice,
proposal for study,
question,
rant,
records,
research,
society
Quotation from The Art of Serenity
Just picked up this book off my Dad’s bookshelf, and came across this passage:
Happiness doesn’t mean gratification of all the senses, or constant and frenzied pursuit of excitement. We overvalue leisure time, and some people even try to figure out ways to rest during work hours. They keep complaining about their work and lack of sufficient time for relaxation. Yet if they allow themselves even greater leisure time, they experience deeper unhappiness. This is because the problem is not with the insufficiency of leisure time but with the concept of leisure itself. The fact is that leisure is enjoyable only if it follows work. A person who is genuinely engaged in his work is not preoccupied with whether he is happy or not.
-T. Byram Karasu’s The Art of Serenity, pg. 42
Tags:
happiness,
Leisure,
psychology,
quotation,
T. Byram Karasu,
The Art of Happiness
