Embracing Chaos

“May you live in interesting times.” -Ancient Chinese Proverb (actually, it isn’t.) The idea behind this saying is that times of rapid change are generally quite painful. Historically interesting times are those involving wars and revolutions — things where lots of people die. Growth and improvement have only come through very slow gradual change. But in today’s China, this is anything but true. Right now is one of the most interesting times in China’s long history, and for the majority of the country, it’s fantastic. (If we all work hard, that kind of intersting time might be behind us.) We…

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Ever wonder what Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay were saying to each other before it all fell apart? Now you can read it for yourself. Check out the Enron Explorer. It lets you browse over 200,000 internal Enron e-mails. It’s got a nifty java applet for exploring connections and even has shortcuts for interesting topics like the FBI and shredding. Let’s hear it for information democracy! Thanks to Charles Armstrong for putting this together.

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I consider myself a transhumanist. I spend probably too much time thinking about very long-terrm trends of humanity. Some of the trends I see seem obvious to the point of being irrefutable, while others I’m sure are controversial. Nevertheless, I’ll lay out a few of the basic tenants of transhumanism, and begin to explain why they lead to the very deep and personal implications they have for me. Computers are getting faster and more powerful. As they do so, they’re helping humans be smarter. Maybe not invidual humans, as some studies have shown that things like e-mail and powerpoint can…

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I was thinking about getting all serious-like and talking about how cultural relativism makes it hard for me to judge the immorality of gangsta rap that glorifies crime. And I’ll still rant just a bit. But really my main motivation is to shout out props to Weird Al for his new song “White & Nerdy”. (For extra entertainment, watch the questionably-legal video at youtube, at least until they take it down.) It’s parodying a song by Chamillionaire that glorifies smuggling drugs. Nice work dude — way to be a positive influence on other people’s lives. This is one of the…

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This afternoon in my office’s cafeteria I found a new refridgerator stocked with tasty beverages. Starbucks Iced Coffee in a can. And guess what: it’s free. For now, at least. Want some candy little boy? C’mon, try it. I remember a couple of years ago seeing them giving away cans of their then-new double-shot canned caffeine high downtown on the sidewalk. They’ll get you hooked and then you come back begging for more, $5 in hand. Sound like any other industry we know? Many years ago I remember a friend of mine saying she was investing in Starbucks because she…

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Hoefstede identified several axes on which cultures differ. One of them relates to whether people in a culture tend to think more about rights or responsibilities. In the US we talk a lot about people’s rights, and relatively little about people’s responsibilities. Civil rights. Bill of rights. Right to life. etc. Europeans tend to swing towards the other side of that spectrum. For example, a sense of responsibility for impact on future generations tends to leads to valuing environmental issues more greatly. The communist party line in China is also very concerned with responsibilities, but in a somewhat different way….

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