life beyond the screen

Kevin Kelly writes, “Even the tiniest disposable item with a bar code shares a thin sliver of our collective mind.” Sharing in the increasing webness of things surrounding us is essential part of functioning in our digital society. If you have hung out on the cusp of technological adoption, waiting for the latest and most advanced devices to drop, you know how technology can monopolize our time and question any non-technological solution as inferior or important. The Internet is our exotic travel destination, a portal to bossy technologies.

Here’s the choice you have: You can grab the bullhorn of digital culture and plug into the belly of the machine or we can keep the cornucopia of technology at arm’s length to more easily remember who we are apart from it.

Somewhere there’s a balance between chasing the latest fad (simply because it is new) and becoming irrelevant to the conversation (because we choose to ignore transitions, remaining in our comfort zone). These extremes are the simplistic ditches we can fall into, when we would rather not have to regularly think hard and deal with uncertainty…and they will remain the temptations of anyone involved in the process of journalism.

As you decide where to place yourself in the technological embrace, remember there’s life beyond the screen.

Stephen Goforth

the glowing screen

When we grab a glowing screen first thing in the morning what are we trusting for nourishment? What are we imprinting on our day? 

When your appliances work as police informants

Suppose police suspect a man of organizing a political protest that turned violent, muses the ACLU’s Nathan Wessler, who argued the Carpenter case (on digital privacy) for the ACLU before the Supreme Court. The suspect’s smart meter and thermostat confirm that a handful of people showed up at his home and stayed there the two nights before the demonstration; the suspect’s smart refrigerator ordered a bunch of soda and snack food on those days, which was all consumed; after someone asked Alexa to play some music in his living room, a voice in the background said, “Tomorrow, we’re going to really show them”; and that night, the suspect’s smart mattress recorded him sleeping fitfully and his heart beating faster than normal. The police arrest the man on conspiracy and other charges. He eventually proves he’s innocent – some old friends visited from out of town, and planned a day of sightseeing—but not before a legal nightmare turns his life upside down.

 "There’s not a person among us who doesn’t have private aspects of their life that could create difficulty for them if they were exposed,” Wessler says. “And misinterpreted.”

David Henry writing in 1843

do well with what you have

The trouble is, you think you have time. -Jack Kornfield

Listen to the Young

Listen hardest to people younger than you. They are ignorant and generally have lowly jobs, but their fragments of knowledge will be more cutting-edge than yours. -Simon Kuper

Where to Begin

Begin with the end in mind. -Stephen R. Covey

forget yourself

Get lost in a book. Watch a sunset. Do things that make you forget yourself.

Winging It

There are no grown-ups. We suspect this when we are younger, but can confirm it only once we are the ones writing books and attending parent-teacher conferences. Everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.

Pamela Druckerman writing in the New York Times

unsolicited advice

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.  Mary Schmich

a Life Tip for Graduates

Because I graduated in Britain, I missed out on the traditional American commencement ceremony at which a middle-aged bore intones, “You can be whatever you want to be.” Obviously, you can’t be whatever you want to be. The trick is to work out what you should be. -Simon Kuper

religious morality

There is always a danger of thinking religious morality is the same as cultural norms. (unknown)

stubbing your toe

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.  Charles F. Kettering

Saying No

How do you personally determine when it’s right to say ‘no’ to an ask or opportunity?

I ask myself three questions:     

Is this in line with my values?    

Will it add significant value to my life? (Skills, increase my network, etc.)    

What will I be sacrificing to take on this opportunity?

Claire Wasserman, Founder of Ladies Get Paid in GirlsNightinClub

the highest mountain

You walk over the highest mountain one step at a time.

Learning from Envy

Aristotle described envy not as benign desire for what someone else possesses but “as the pain caused by the good fortune of others.” Not surprisingly these pangs often give way to a feeling of malice. Witness the fact that throughout history and across cultures, anyone who enjoyed a piece of good fortune feared and set up defenses against the “evil eye.” Of course, there is not much talk today about the evil eye, at least not in the West, but it surely isn’t because we are less prone to envy than our ancestors.

One of the reasons envy does not take a holiday is that we never give a rest to the impulse to compare ourselves to one another. I have had students respond with glee to being admitted to a graduate program and then a few days later coyly ask: “Hey, Doc. How many applicants do you think were rejected?” — as in, the more rejected the merrier I can allow myself to be.

Social media has generated new vistas for this compulsion to compare and lord it over others.

“Envy is secret admiration,” Kierkegaard said. As such, if we are honest with ourselves, envy can help us identify our vision of excellence and where need be, perhaps reshape it.

Gordon Marino writing in The New York Times

You never know

You never know when you're making a memory.

pack your bag

I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones. -Leslie Jamison

your choice

You make what seems a simple choice: Choose a man or a job or a neighborhood—and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life. -Jessamyn West

Your coworkers are better at rating some parts of your personality

Sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance. As a social scientist, if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re often more than twice as accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t—and these studies reveal that whatever you know about yourself that your coworkers don’t is basically irrelevant to your job performance.

Adam Grant writing in the Atlantic

what to do with the towel

You have a choice. You can throw in the towel, or you can use it to wipe the sweat off of your face.