In college I built my own computer. It was a great experience, and I still use that computer 7 years later when writing this. Saying you built your own computer tends to earn a lot of tech savvy points with the average person, but it's really not that hard. A lot's changed since the days of Wozniak's home brew club & the Altair, and these days you can by the parts and put them together without much more difficulty than assembling a piece of Ikea furniture. If you need an upgrade later, you can open your case up & snap a piece in.
This ease is based in no small part on the standardization of the ATX & PCI standards, a set of guidelines for how hardware should be made in such a way as to be compatible with other devices. One thing that's impressed and worried me lately is the dearth of such a standard for cell phones, and the perhaps anemic attempts to create one. It's an unfortunate marker of the way technology has gone from a scientific industry with the goal of empowering individuals and humankind to a consumer industry chasing fashion and trendiness, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
People are talking a lot these days about a little thing a little, 3.5 millimeter thing. Apple decided not to include a headphone jack on their phones, Google is following suit with their latest Pixel, and the creator of the android OS also axed the jack with the Essential Phone. The last one really bugs me, because empowering the tech consumer with more choices is one of the reasons why essential was founded, and yet the most ubiquitous, easy to use, and powerful interface options was deemed unnecessary.
OK, when I started this blog I wanted to stick to bigger issues, things that effect society or even humanity. Why am I letting myself get distracted by the minutia of what's popular in cell phones these days? Well, it's because this is a symptom of a larger, much more insidious cultural disease. Wow, OK that could be overselling it, but as I've mentioned before the choice to go with something stylish or convenient instead of something which creates an empowering infrastructure is perilous.
The Essential phone has some special connectors for accessories. Motorola is making phones with attachable accessories as well, but they go the extra mile of providing a developer kit for independent companies that want to produce these. The highest level of this was the now tragically defunct Project Ara which planned to produce an entirely modular smartphone. It also had the distinction of being the only project I know of that would have released a standard that could be used by any company to produce appropriate components. If the essential accessories or moto mods take off, any other manufacturer that wants to let customers use these will have to license the specifications from essential or Motorola, and that means they probably won't proliferate anytime soon.
And thus we, the consumer, have to be content taking whatever the phone companies decide to give us. Oh, we can shop around a little for more memory here or a better camera there, but the reality is we can't really choose what we want in our phones, or how they work. A handful of tech giants makes those decisions for us. And that's not only true for phones. that's true for social networks, gaming platforms, and more. What's the more? Well, perhaps news organizations, political parties, and advertisements. This is where the insidious cultural disease part comes up. Most people have their phone on them for most of the day in 2017. We can't act like decisions about how that works being made by some team of marketers and engineers rather than individuals is OK and won't siphon away independence and freedom from the individual.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Anger at God
During recent tragedy one thing that's changed is my conception about being angry with God. To be clear, I'm not sure I can say I have ever been angry with God in my life. Some may ask why, and it's likely because I've never really taken the absolutist, omnipotent, or total control of every worldly detail view of God. I believe God is only omnipotent as they have access to all power, and even then I understand that a belief in a just God obviates the ability to believe in an omnipotent God as certain laws greater than that God must then be followed. I've also believed strongly in free will, and that God's protection or preservation thereof is a necessary condition for their existence, or at least their Godhood. However, I am also convinced in a personal God, one who cares deeply for their children and wishes involvement in their lives (but like any good parent, must limit their involvement to allow independence to develop).
I find the parental analogy very compelling, and this has led me to an interesting thought on being angry with God. A quick search on being angry with God will reveal how many people are uncomfortable with the idea. It feels blasphemous, perhaps, but I think there's one person who's quite OK with people being angry at God and that's God themself.
My wife and I hope to have kids, and that hope's no longer in the distant future, so I've read the occasional article about parenting, discussed it with friends and family, and tried to gain what experience I can watching over others' children. I've learned that a mature adult generally weathers the storm and is understanding of a child's anger, even though it often ends up pointed toward them, without becoming upset or angry about the situation themselves. Good parents understand and allow their children to become angry, they often don't take it personally, and recognize that they may have to accept their child's fury themselves because understanding the larger situation is beyond the child (at least at this point in their development).
Some of this thinking may have come together when a friend of mine who is a mother took a sip of her son's drink, leading to a short spat of crying and yelling, "I didn't want you to do that!" over and over. That moment seemed so childish, crying out wishing an event hadn't happened but not providing any ideas for redress or seemingly unwilling to come to an understanding or acceptance of the painful reality of what's occurred, and yet it also seemed so familiar as I and my loved ones were often doing the same only our yells were, "I wish she hadn't died." This may seem uncaring on my part to compare a child's displeasure and losing out on a sip of milk to the death of a loved one, but from God's perspective it might not be so different, and again I find the similarities of the emotional turmoil experienced eerily similar.
Yes, I'm certainly speaking from a Christian perspective here, but I've tried to ensure I'm speaking in the most general terms. If you're an atheist, agnostic, or otherwise unaligned or undecided allow me to speak to you a little more closely at this time, and if you're one of my Christian or otherwise theistic audience members lend me some latitude for a moment. One of the important roles of God is that of an abstraction, or even verbal shorthand. Some theists like to make much of Einstein's very profound theism, but the God of Einstein probably more resembled the impersonal physical laws pervading all creation through all time than the proverbial sky daddy in which many of them might profess faith. From this perspective anger at God is easy to understand; we're angry at the whims of fortune that brought us to our current place (and hey, like the ancient myth-makers knew when they came up with Thor, Ares, or Sopona it's more cathartic to personify your ill fate than to allow it to persist ethereal).
So I think God completely accepts our anger towards them. That said, anger isn't a healthy emotion. Without even addressing the psychology, it increases blood pressure and depresses the immune system so it is unwise to maintain for long periods of time. I think this is why forgiveness is so powerful, and so important. The concept of forgiveness is often abused, taken to mean we can't treat people or entities with suspicion or coolness when that may be exactly what is deserved, but I think forgiveness starts with releasing the feelings of rancor and hatred toward others. Forgiveness can go beyond that, but often anything beyond that requires penitence on the part of the trespasser, so the beginning may well be the most important part of forgiveness if only because it will be the most often used.
Whether one conceives of God as a loving cosmic Allfather or even as an impersonal cosmic force permeating the universe and seen in its structure and beauty we can accept anger toward God, and perhaps even recognize it as necessary at times. When to move beyond this anger, to forgive God and once again connect with the omnipresent divinity will depend on the individual and is likely to be a difficult task. I pray those in need may do so, and hope these meager thoughts on the matter help.
I find the parental analogy very compelling, and this has led me to an interesting thought on being angry with God. A quick search on being angry with God will reveal how many people are uncomfortable with the idea. It feels blasphemous, perhaps, but I think there's one person who's quite OK with people being angry at God and that's God themself.
My wife and I hope to have kids, and that hope's no longer in the distant future, so I've read the occasional article about parenting, discussed it with friends and family, and tried to gain what experience I can watching over others' children. I've learned that a mature adult generally weathers the storm and is understanding of a child's anger, even though it often ends up pointed toward them, without becoming upset or angry about the situation themselves. Good parents understand and allow their children to become angry, they often don't take it personally, and recognize that they may have to accept their child's fury themselves because understanding the larger situation is beyond the child (at least at this point in their development).
Some of this thinking may have come together when a friend of mine who is a mother took a sip of her son's drink, leading to a short spat of crying and yelling, "I didn't want you to do that!" over and over. That moment seemed so childish, crying out wishing an event hadn't happened but not providing any ideas for redress or seemingly unwilling to come to an understanding or acceptance of the painful reality of what's occurred, and yet it also seemed so familiar as I and my loved ones were often doing the same only our yells were, "I wish she hadn't died." This may seem uncaring on my part to compare a child's displeasure and losing out on a sip of milk to the death of a loved one, but from God's perspective it might not be so different, and again I find the similarities of the emotional turmoil experienced eerily similar.
Yes, I'm certainly speaking from a Christian perspective here, but I've tried to ensure I'm speaking in the most general terms. If you're an atheist, agnostic, or otherwise unaligned or undecided allow me to speak to you a little more closely at this time, and if you're one of my Christian or otherwise theistic audience members lend me some latitude for a moment. One of the important roles of God is that of an abstraction, or even verbal shorthand. Some theists like to make much of Einstein's very profound theism, but the God of Einstein probably more resembled the impersonal physical laws pervading all creation through all time than the proverbial sky daddy in which many of them might profess faith. From this perspective anger at God is easy to understand; we're angry at the whims of fortune that brought us to our current place (and hey, like the ancient myth-makers knew when they came up with Thor, Ares, or Sopona it's more cathartic to personify your ill fate than to allow it to persist ethereal).
So I think God completely accepts our anger towards them. That said, anger isn't a healthy emotion. Without even addressing the psychology, it increases blood pressure and depresses the immune system so it is unwise to maintain for long periods of time. I think this is why forgiveness is so powerful, and so important. The concept of forgiveness is often abused, taken to mean we can't treat people or entities with suspicion or coolness when that may be exactly what is deserved, but I think forgiveness starts with releasing the feelings of rancor and hatred toward others. Forgiveness can go beyond that, but often anything beyond that requires penitence on the part of the trespasser, so the beginning may well be the most important part of forgiveness if only because it will be the most often used.
Whether one conceives of God as a loving cosmic Allfather or even as an impersonal cosmic force permeating the universe and seen in its structure and beauty we can accept anger toward God, and perhaps even recognize it as necessary at times. When to move beyond this anger, to forgive God and once again connect with the omnipresent divinity will depend on the individual and is likely to be a difficult task. I pray those in need may do so, and hope these meager thoughts on the matter help.
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