Month: June 2018

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The age of digital abundance is here. It is spread all over the world. Today is June 2018, and I attend a writing project. In this project, I use the Internet and social media to connect with many project members all over the world. Words accumulate on my hard drive along with many other items. There are photos, videos, sharply written articles, and recordings of sound. Each day, I spend hours in front of the computer engaged in watching and reading, writing and editing. I have to store my data in an understandable and accessible structure. I spend hours creating this structure. I often say:” Later, I will have the opportunity and power to do something with all this highly interesting material”.
By my own measure, the amount of data I have accumulated and stored is enormous. What do I create using this data? What is my output? What is my balance of data in versus data out? I am pretty sure these flows do not match. In fact, I do not have enough time left here on earth to consume data I have stored. If I made myself a balance sheet, I would be in the red.
When young, I subscribed to magazines, bought books. I recorded music and radio conversations on a magnificent Tandberg tape recorder with 7” reels. Today my action pattern is similar. But, the amount of data I handle has increased drastically. At a younger age, I had many more years left until final checkout.
Let us shift perspective and look at the other end of this issue. At this point, I see myself and my capacity to process data. How many gigabytes per hour am I capable o take as input? What output do I generate? How do I create something of value from all stored data? Sixty years ago, I was young and fostered thoughts about myself and my capacity. At that time, I was far better to balance data input with what I was doing.
Today, I suspect I am profoundly out of balance. At least it feels like that. It has been this way for quite some time. I am beginning to accept it as a fact and hope I will act upon it soon. I regard myself as above average in operating computers and the Internet. But, I do not have a similar capacity to create value out of this data. I mean value to those near to me or myself. I am still able to immerse myself in vast oceans of data, at least technically. But I risk drowning or head for the ”delete” button in despair. To cope I will have to build an entirely new magnitude of personal will, decisiveness and discipline. And I have to do it now. How? Am I too old for this?
What am I talking about and how do I make something out of it? I do not want to whine about the effects of modern times. Do I take the old way out and describe my self as a victim of evil forces out there? Maybe a scheme designed by manufacturers of hard drives or flash memories. They appreciate when the market consume an ever rising amount of digital memory. After all the amount consumed transistors per year follows Moore´s law! Do I gain by describing me as a victim of having been born before the digital era? Did I not learn a healthy ignorance and distance to this new world. Or am I a victim of not having grasped this problem early enough and adequately prepared myself? Or do my kind of personality suffer a mismatch? Or am I just one single individual in a minority fading away? We soon grow into senile individuals and eventually die off.
Or am I an individual that happened to be sensitive to early low level seismic vibrations. Signals showing a potential future risk for major social disruptions and distress? May this distress risk to go far beyond anything humans have ever experienced yet?

Göran Stille, © June 2018

(Please feel free to send me your comments and feedback)

I have seen a human at the peak moment of her life, but not like this. The setting sun is illuminating everything in front of me and paints the image in shades of orange. Soon the sun will be obscured behind clouds and dip below the horizon. In front of me is the Dutch shoreline to the North Sea. The evening is calm and silent. Small waves break on the beach sand. My ears catch a rhythmic noise coming from far away. Rapidly, it increases in strength.
At full speed, an elegant horse is approaching along the shoreline. Four hooves splash the shallow water. Within seconds the animal passes just in front of me. A young female rides the horse in full gallop. Her ponytail stretches in the slipstream.
I was walking along Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris. I passed a newsstand with a lot of postcards on display. Among hundreds of them, I saw one showing this scene. On the spot, I was overwhelmed by deep emotions. I started to cry. These emotions did no leave me until later that evening. I did not have a clue about why this happened.
The card carries a sentence written in French. My knowledge of this language is weak. But I happened to translate it into something like: ”You should take living seriously”. Later I understood that it was not that bad a translation.
The event occurred decades ago. Still, I don’t know why I reacted this way. This is one of my mysteries. I have a closet full of them. I better guard them and let them be my secrets.

Göran Stille, © June 2018