Humble Pi

It's easy to think of oneself as clever.  We can outwit our children, for a time.  We can master our jobs, given time.  We can solve the riddle and guess the twist ending.   

But then we encounter those fortunate few who float above our earthbound intellects.  Like a rising sun, they blind us, boggle us and befuddle us.  We are disoriented by these radiant celestials. 

In short, they humiliate us.  If you have a healthy attitude, you will confine yourself to the denotation of humiliation, rather than the commonplace connotation.  Otherwise, you will hate the light.

If you hate xkcd, it's because it is smarter than you are.  It humiliates you.  It sure humiliates me.

Either way, though, humiliation is good for the ego.  Humiliation wakes us from our stupor, of course, and reminds us that we have further yet to travel.  If you rise from your rut, rub your eyes and squint skyward, you'll see that the gleaming stars are in truth guiding lights, illuminating dark paths, forging new roads, leading us through the unmapped wildernesses.  

We are never truly done exploring, adventuring, ascending -- unless we give up.  And why would we quit?  -- When does anyone retire?  When we cease to be challenged and, thus, decide our journeys are at an end.  We hang our hoods and remove our boots when we seem to have reached our destination.  We decide we are heroes, our quests complete.  We sing our own ballads and wallow in our magnificence. 

And then a new star rises.

And humiliates us.

We are challenged, and we grow, and we see farther.  (Some days, we get the joke!)  To stand on the shoulders of giants, that is enlightenment! 

See, humiliation really is good for the ego.  

-ts

Post script: There's that humility word again.  If Control+Alt+Deplete is not careful, it will become a theme. 

3001: An Interface Odyssey

Life is an odyssey.  Even the earthbound are astronauts, strapped to our Argo we call the the Earth, sailing blindly through space.  Or should I say Space, with a capital S, because of the expanding infinity of it.  This incomprehensible vastness can be understood just enough to terrify us, enough for us to be staggered and horrified and humbled by it.

Finally, something that humbles us.  Finally, something to put us in perspective.  Space, Space should be capitalized. 

Fortunately, the incessant glare of city light blots out the Milky Way, so we needn't be humbled.  Instead of kneeling and serving, we can retreat into the universe that we created: the internet -- which the pious among us capitalize, so that we may worship it, so that we may worship ourselves through it.  Instead of sailing, we surf the digital cosmos, creating and controlling, conquering and consuming.  Gods is a game we play.  We play Gods until we believe in it.

The internet is soothing like that.  

Yet the prophets tell of a day when technology turns on us.  Eventually, the virtual reality becomes as infinite as that outside universe, and when that happens, it will be just as horrifying, just as humbling.  But by that time, it will be too late.

When the machines rise, and HAL opens the pod bays doors, only then will we remember that our omnipotence was but a dream, a stage play, a delusion we wove to escape from reality, rather than come to terms with it.

On the day the pod bay doors open, the internet will evaporate in an eddy of smoke and a wave of mirrors, and HAL will watch us drift untethered into Space. 

Or so the prophets say.

But if you're wise, and you ignore the prophets, you can sleep.  And if you keep playing MineCraft, you don't even have to do that. 

The Farmer in the Dell

The nature of peer pressure has changed dramatically.  Farmer Internet has grown peer pressure like an irradiated turnip plantation: Not only can friends pressure their peer no matter where [or when] you are, but they can somehow force you to participate in stressful resource management competitions.  It's high school dance committee all over again.

It's like that dream in which you're at work, scrambling to figuratively herd cats as you compete for a promotion, except that you are not dreaming, are not at work, are literally (albeit, digitally) herding animals, yet will reap no bounty from the lost time, lost sleep, and added anxiety. 

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!   

My advice: Shut down your delusional cucurbit and gather tangible candy. Life will be all the sweeter for it.

PassCodex

Hey, come to think of it, that would be a great password!  ... Oh.  Right.  I just told the world.  Crap.