Posted by Raul on February 27, 2010
It is somehow crazy; just a couple of days ago I was posting a thought about loosing the technology we count on everyday and this morning I learned about the earthquake that hit my country, Chile.
Fortunately all friends and family back there seems to be OK and getting themselves together after the disaster; only broken stuff in homes but homes still standing.
But there were those who weren’t so lucky; all the destruction and the death toll that is still unclear. I hope for a quick re-organization and a very small number of death and wounded people.
Earthquakes are a common occurrence in Chile due to its geography; this is a portion of the text found on Wikipedia about my country:
“The northern two-thirds of Chile lie on top of the telluric Nazca Plate, which, moving eastward about ten centimeters a year, is forcing its way under the continental plate of South America. This movement has resulted in the formation of the Peru-Chile Trench, which lies beyond a narrow band of coastal waters off the northern two-thirds of the country. The trench is about 150 km (93 mi) wide and averages about 5,000 m (16,404 ft) in depth. At its deepest point, just north of the port of Antofagasta, it plunges to 8,066 m (26,463 ft). Although the ocean’s surface obscures this fact, most of Chile lies at the edge of a profound precipice.
The same telluric displacements that created the Peru-Chile Trench make the country highly prone to earthquakes. During the twentieth century, Chile has been struck by twenty-eight major earthquakes, all with a force greater than 6.9 on the Richter scale. The strongest of these occurred in 1906 (registering an estimated 8.4 on the Richter scale) and in Valdivia 1960 (reaching 9.5).”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Chile
This latest earthquake is said to have reached 8.8 in the Richter scale, and although lots of information can be found already in the internet, still there’s lots of work to be done to visualize the real situation and the amount of damage created.
For now, our thoughts and feelings are with those who didn’t make it, those suffering this occurrence and our wishes for a quick reorganization and back to a normal life.
Raul
Posted by Raul on February 26, 2010
Blogging could be like the place where we live.
For a new blogger with few visitors and comments it might feel like living in the country; it could be a solitary work with lots of space around and living a slow paced life.
Sometimes someone comes around and ask questions so the blogger feels happy with the visitor and try to be nice and friendly; there could be some chatting and it’ll be a subject of conversation with friends and family.
At the time of checking emails, comments or visitor numbers you can hear the gently sound of crickets in the distance and contemplating the stars for a while before going to bed is a must.
Perhaps the dream of moving to the big city will show up once more and the blogger will spend some time wondering what it would feel like to be there.
For a seasoned blogger with lots of traffic and followers (I believe) it could be like living in the city with a fast paced life.
When you visit them and see the number of comments and enter to make your own you can hear the talking, the laughter and the sound of glasses all mixed up with the music in the background; it’s like going to a party!
I imagine the blogger is like the host of the party, dealing with a thousand little details one after another, making sure everyone feels at home and happy to be there.
Checking emails and comments must be like dealing with parking for all the visitors, trying to find room for everyone, coordinating the space available, while the sounds of engines revving can be heard above the voices and the chatting.
For the new blogger going to one of these seasoned blogger’s party could feel intimidating; after all somehow it is the dream to be the host one day, yet being able to deal with all the little details with such grace and efficiency while holding a smile for everyone seems to be a giant task.
So the process of moving from the country to the city has to be a slow and planned one, with a basic learning at first and then a plunge into the perpetual movement and light that is the city.
So I wonder…
Are there seasoned bloggers with lots of traffic and followers that dream of retirement in a quiet place in the country where they can slow down and enjoy the writing and the occasional chatting with friends and sporadic visitors?
Just a crazy thought!
Raul
Posted by Raul on February 24, 2010
It is so easy to feel smart when we can get something done with just a couple of clicks in the computer; so easy to feel entrepreneurial when text messaging or using the cell phone throughout the day at any time for whatever we just remembered to ask to someone away, but then, what if we had to go on with our lives without all the technology available today?
No microwave oven, no refrigerator, no telephones, no email, cars, etc. So easy to destroy an entire civilization…just turn off the electricity for the next six months!
Only a couple of decades ago many people could cook something simple, but not today; many people could fix basic stuff in their vehicles and around the house, yet today seems to be tasks for experts to call in.
Technology allows us to do more things in less time, which is a good thing, but if we rely too much in it we pass to the point where we become unable to live without it, we become dependant and requiring its existence in our surroundings in order to survive and keep going.
We don’t need memory anymore, we don’t need to calculate, we don’t need to create plans, all we have to do is use our technology to do that for us, and for everything else we can “Google it”
What would happens if suddenly, for whatever the reason, we loose all technology available and have to go back to the times when we had to cultivate the land for food and create our clothing from animal skin? Even not going so extreme but just thinking of having only the technology available to us in the 50’s? And to a bigger extreme; taking out of the equation cell phones, GPS, personal computers, etc, just going back to the 70’s would be catastrophic for many.
It is so easy to feel smart when using all these new technologies we have access to nowadays yet if we think of what could we do without it. Even in small, little details, like when we don’t have a car because of repairs being performed and we have to go somewhere, how complicated it becomes. Or when we don’t have electricity and still have to cook and do our normal activities at home; don’t you still flip the switch when entering a room at night, even if you know that there is no electricity at that moment?
We become so dependant on technology that we stop thinking of living without it and what it’ll be like. Some time ago, with this expanding fear of terrorist attacks, when people I know were talking of a possibility of the city being bombed, some of them hurried up and got prepared for the destruction fitting an extra refrigerator in the basement and stuffed it with frozen food for that possible occurrence; but there’ll be no electricity! Are they going to eat all that frozen food in one day?
I’m not saying we should go back to live without technology; that would be impossible and not logic anyway, but at least, shouldn’t we think of how would we perform our daily activities and how those activities would be changed due to not having the aid of this beloved technology of ours.
If we think about it, in general we don’t know how to cultivate the land, how to care for animals, and then process them for food, we don’t know how to build a house starting from cutting the trees and making furniture using just a bunch of hand tools. (There’ll be no “Google” remember?)
Think of it as going back to living like in “Little House on the Prairie” TV series. It looks pretty nostalgic but how many of us could make it without going nuts, at least for a while.
With this, I’m not saying we should cut off technology and go back to the beginnings so to be prepared, but rather just take a moment to think and stop asking for more solutions from our devices and start seeing them as for what they are, tools to make things faster and better, but not a replacement for our brains and thinking capabilities so we don’t loose our memory, our capabilities of association and our dexterity and therefore we can keep learning and having control of our lives.
And if you excuse me now, I’ll press “Enter” to publish this post automatically 
Raul
Posted by Raul on February 22, 2010
If you consider…
-100 Music CD’s 80 MB each 8 GB
-10 DVD Movies 3 GB each 30 GB
-25,000 Digital Pictures 0,4 MB each 10 GB
-250 Home Videos 40 MB each 10 GB
-100 Books 1 MB each 0.1 GB
-8,000 Written Pages 12 KB each 0.1 GB
-TOTAL 58.2 GB
So if we select our 100 favorites music CD’s; our favorites 10 DVD movies; collect 25,000 digital pictures in our lifetime (312.5 pictures per year after 80 years); add 250 home made videos of what’s important to us; throw in 100 of our favorite books and complete the list with 8,000 pages written by us with our thoughts and things we learned in our time (that’s about 26 books) we could end up with about 60 GB of digital information; and this amount could easily fit in a 64 GB Flash Drive.
Almost everything that somehow represent who we are, based on the information and elements we accumulate, like music, movies, pictures, books, written stuff, etc. can be easily and conveniently stored for posterity in a simple flash drive!
“Grandpa is hanging on the wall of the living room and when the kids want to ask him something, want to see what grandpa would do in this situation, or simply want to spend some time sneaking on his life, how it was, etc. they just plug in the flash drive in the computer and grandpa comes to life in the screen.”
Crazy isn’t it?
We could even leave a pre-recorded video (250 MB for about 5 minutes) saying hello to everyone who stops by to visit us, maybe some short videos explaining the different folders in the flash drive and what that information means to us, the impact it had in our lives and how it directed our thoughts and actions at that time.
Even if we think we’ll need more room for more stuff, we can use a 256 GB flash drive (still a little expensive but soon will be common use) and that is 4 times 64 GB!
If we stop to think for a moment on what could be, we can see that no longer should a person’s life be left to dissolve in time and space after the person dies. With the new technology available an entire life could be saved in a digital form for the following generations to know and learn from.
It’ll be really interesting for me to know more about my grandparents, their lives, their struggles, their accomplishments, their dreams and fears, etc, but all I have access to is an old, deteriorated photography, taken in the 1930’s and the fragile memories of my parents trying to remember, to tell me some stories that transcended time.
My grandparents didn’t have the opportunity to leave a flash drive for the generations to come to tell their stories and their truth, but we have now and perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea and as a way to be with our loved ones in the future when our physical bodies finally decide they had enough.
Or maybe they will not be interested and will just throw away the flash drive!
The point is: How incredible it is that now we do have the opportunity and how insignificant seems to be an entire life condensed in just a 64 GB flash drive!
What do you think?
Would you create a digital pyramid tomb in the form of a flash drive to preserve who you are for your loved ones to see in the future?
Raul
Posted by Raul on February 19, 2010
Some time ago I spent a couple hours surfing YouTube for Microcars and somehow ended up watching videos about the end of the world in 2012.
It seems that always there is something to be afraid of: Terrorism, Avian flu, Piggy flu, New World Order, etc. And one of the latest is the world end by 2012.
I don’t know how many books and videos have been sold so far, but even movies are “coming out this summer to a theater near you” Thousand of videos on YouTube and new messiahs preaching about the end. All based on the Mayan calendar and Nibiru approach, plus the psychosis some people create.
Should I clarify that I don’t believe the world is going to end?
With all this fuss about 2012 there is a huge market of products, books, videos, movies, blogs, websites, etc. and I’m still looking for “2012, The Lunch Box”
Could it just be that the Mayan guy making the calendar died of an old age and his counterparts though there’ll be no use for them to continue his “work”? It happens all the times, right?
At the other hand, if for any reason the axis of earth shift just a tiny fraction of a degree, maybe in the lapse of several years, without provoking big nature changes, it’ll still throw the calendar obsolete since it is based in the rotation of this planet around the sun and in its position in relation to the other stars and planets in space and the path they make in the sky when observing from our rock.
So we might end up having to create a new calendar if the actual one becomes obsolete for reasons like the one mentioned before, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the world, and we buy a new calendar every year anyway!
Also, if there is a shift on earth axis, maybe some people will not have to take so cold winters anymore and others will have fresh summers for a change! (just kidding)
In any case, earth mass is huge and shifting the axis will take hundreds of years since is not easy to change direction of rotation to a body that has this size and weight. Even airplanes use gyroscopes to know their position in the air in relation to the ground since a gyroscope tend to keep its position.
Or put in a different way, grab a bicycle wheel from the axis and move it side by side and in any direction you want; it is easy. Now try with the wheel spinning, it becomes very difficult…that’s a gyroscope, and that’s what earth is in space.
So it becomes very difficult that something terrible happen in 2012 unless we get hit by a huge asteroid, but it wouldn’t be like the movies, just a second and old earth doesn’t exist anymore; no fancy running!
The whole process from the moment an asteroid enters the earth atmosphere to the impact would be just a couple of minutes; and with all the amateur astronomers around the world who watch the skies for fun there is no way the approach of an asteroid can be a secret held by NASA. Just add these astronomers with the internet and the news will spread really fast.
So I guess is about to keep searching for that lunch box and keep worrying about retiring money…no easy escape!
Raul
