Agnoiologist

I have a really close circle of friends, which is amazing. There are, however, disadvantages. If everyone knows everyone else, it’s harder to meet new people. Jobs are usually found not through close friends but through people further in the periphery of one’s social networks, such as friends of friends. People with whom I have weak ties can still help me out, and vice versa.

I’ve been more interested in broadening who I interact with for two reasons. One: I just read Connected, which is an accessible book on research on social networks. Two: The deadline. The contract for my job is up at the end of March. So, I’ll need to find a new job. I’ve also been considering finding a girl to date, I associate that with the deadline because who wants to hang out with a jobless bum? This will involve looking past my immediate circle of friends so I can interact with people who are connected to new people.

As I’m doing all that self-serving stuff, I want to also help my friend find a job, so I’m also using those weak ties for that.

Other notes in my life:
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate IE6. I have to make sure everything works for it because of this corporate environment. Ugh. I don’t bother supporting IE6 in any of my personal projects, and I’m pretty sure Jakob Nielsen said it’s okay.

I’ve started to become really bugged by people wearing suit jackets/sport coats with jeans. Of course, I just broke this rule yesterday, but it was a dark pair of jeans and I was wearing a dark sweater with it. I’m also not sure what to think about black jeans. Obviously, this rule has exceptions.

I have another full weekend, and I feel guilty that I’m not looking forward to any of it. There’s going out tonight, party on Saturday, and the Super Bowl on Sunday. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to any of it because these events won’t be fun (I will undoubtedly have fun), but that I’m feeling kind of burnt out right now. It feels like I’m busy all the fucking time. Last weekend was spent in Vegas. Monday I met people for House. Tuesday I didn’t go anywhere, but I worked on my comic. Wednesday I spent working on my class. Thursday I had that get-together with high school friends. That brings me back to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which all have events planned. Plus, I still have to work on a website for my friend.

I really just want some time alone and shun everyone. This would make sense given that as an introvert, I need alone time to recharge. However, I do not think that’s the actual problem, despite my impulses. I think I’m just sleep-deprived. I’ve always been a guy who runs on 8+ hours of sleep, but lately I’ve been running on somewhere around 6 hours of sleep, and often 5 and half hours of sleep. I should do something about this before my fatigue creates pessimism.

I helped plan a small get-together for some of my fellow high school alumni who currently live in the Bay. I hope it goes okay. I have no idea how many people will show up. There are 7 Attending and 10 Maybe. Usually, I count a maybe as a no, but I haven’t seen most of these people in years, so I’m not sure they adhere to the same unspoken rules of facebook etiquette. In any case, I would’ve been happy with just 3 people, including myself.

Note: Tell them that my friend is looking for a job, and that I’m looking for a girlfriend, although the former is more important.

The revolution will be a change in values, or the establishment of new norms. It’s not a series of actions or policies. It must go deeper. We must rethink politics and capitalism, and change the way we do things. When most people accept these new values and society reflects these values, then the revolution will have achieved its goal.

The analogy or image in my mind, currently, of how the revolution will take place is that of reseeding America. The next revolution will be a decentralization of power — returning power to the people. It will be a democratic revolution. The people must take power. This means ordinary citizens, or even mobs. The next revolutionaries must be teams of Johnny Appleseeds reseeding democracy by teaching ordinary citizens how to take power for themselves. So I need to find those who know how to create programs that empower ordinary citizens. There must be a change in the way citizens view government. Cynicism must be cast aside and people need to believe that they own government.

There’s more to it, though. There are three organisms, and each relies on the others to maintain power: Government, business, and media. Each must be reformed simultaneously for the revolution to occur. These 3 organisms will reinforce each other and so must be attacked at the same time.

When I said that there’d be a decentralization of power, I’d like to also apply this to business and media. Only a few corporations control our news, and that needs to change. Banks became “too big to fail.” This calls for cutting things up.

For the media, the revolution means a change in values, not technology. Blogs. Twitter. Google News. None of these means a revolution. We must change the way we do news and the way we think of news, not merely a change in the medium or a change in the way news is disseminated. Technology is inherently neutral; we must make sure it’s used for good and not bad. So, it’s not enough to find the news innovators or the hottest bloggers. It’s about finding those who escape the stupid day-to-day vapidity of cable news and create news that has real value, not just entertainment value. It’s about finding those who don’t kowtow to those in power. It’s not about finding those who agree with me politically; it’s about finding those who have the right values when it comes to creating news.

Those are my thoughts, for now, on what I think a revolution should be. Defined this way, the revolution is already underway. There are already those seeking to do all the things I want. (Like the comment Lloyd left in my last entry on the revolution.) I need to find them and spread their insights.

The revolution will be about creating leaders. These people will show that these new values work and influence others to accept the new reality.

Will you join me?

I have to download these:

• Eclipse
• IETester
• Password Safe
• Winamp
• Spybot

I maybe want to install these:

• Apache
• MySQL
• Windows Grep

Just got my new HP G60t laptop in the mail. I was expecting it to ship today, not arrive today. For once, a pleasant surprise; I’m not big on surprises.

My last laptop was on its last legs. The battery was going bad, and my laptop had started to smell like it was burning when it was running. It was so bad last night that I literally feared my laptop was going to catch on fire. I shut it off and haven’t turned it on since.

This laptop is pretty awesome. My old laptop couldn’t even handle running Opera and Firefox at the same time. Now, I can run all that — and more! I still have yet to test its upper limits, but I did manage to run all 5 browsers I had installed (IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari) at the same time.

Right now, I’m busy downloading programs that I’ll need. I’ve already installed GIMP, FileZilla, and AIM. Next up: OpenOffice. Because I don’t want to spend a bajillion dollars on MS Office.

Afterwards, I’m going to play with connecting my laptop to my TV via HDMI cable. That’s after House, though.

What’s next?

Democrat. Republican. Old Media. New Media.

Ignore them all.

Instead — This is your task: Search for revolutionaries.

The more I read, the more I believe that our problems cannot be solved by incrementalism. The deeper I dig, the more I think that America’s problems are caused by institutional deficiencies. There’s something wrong in the structure of our democracy and economy that’s preventing necessary change. What do we have today? A corporate democracy. A selfish capitalism entangled with a corrupt democracy kept in check by a cowardly media.

The people who can point out the frightening changes are valuable, but I need to especially search for those who have ideas about how to create a new future.

Beneath my discontent is a new framework for thinking, but it is waiting to be born. Find these people. Connect the dots. Then, spark a revolution.

This is how I learn: Explore. Sit. Muse. Synthesize. Tinker. Repeat.

(version 1)

If you really want a window into how I view the world, then you must realize that everything is connected. I’m fascinated by the fact that a photon can travel from light-years away and affect the course of human history. A supernova, separated from us by miles upon miles of emptiness, can ignite a revolution in science and challenge religion. So even though the vast majority of our universe consists of emptiness, it’s still all connected.

Even looking past the physical connection, the universe is connected by the fact of the common laws that govern all of its parts. It’s amazing that the universe even makes sense. Each piece is undergirded by the same laws. Yet underneath all that, there is no one law to rule them all. The universe consists of patterns, but there is no pattern behind the pattern. There is no god, or anything like it. Each piece may have its purpose or make sense as it is. As a whole, the universe serves no purpose; it just is.

A fact cannot be an island. A single bit of information is useless to me. For me to make sense of any fact, it must be connected to other facts. A visual image always appears to me of a web; all my knowledge is connected in a network.

Everything relates to everything. All facts connect to all facts, even the most disparate sounding items. I have this gift for connection, I think. Poker can relate to dating. Computer science can relate to governance. And analogies can always be made, whether for informational or comedic purposes. The most solemn topics can be explained with a 90s reference.

Anything I’ve ever done, anything I’ve ever read, anything that has ever happened to me makes my identity. None of it is useless. Sure, some things may not shine brightly in my consciousness. Some events will never be told when I talk about my life, but it is part of the sum total of who I am. Every atom tells the story of the universe, as well.

This is not meant to be some spiritual revelation. It’s just the lens through which I view the world. Some people like to categorize; some like to take things apart. I like to connect. I like finding the patterns in the universe. I like finding out something that happened 10 years ago to me is very much like something that happened to me today, and now I can explain both.

And immediately after I think that, I think about how I can be wrong. Because even though I talked about laws, I do not reduce things to rules. Yes, I often have shorthand rules for living life, but context always has more importance. This is unsurprising when everything relates to everything. Each event is affected very much by everything surrounding it. Every person that’s different changes what’s happening. Everything matters. Everything is a clue.

I like the word contingent. I like the conservative view of history because of the importance of culture. The surrounding context should affect one’s view of governance more than any silly rules or grand sweeping proclamations about Human Nature. Everything now is dependent on everything in the past.

This attention to complexity and context — I wouldn’t say it makes me entirely unique, but it does make me different from a lot of people. I have the drive to find patterns, but I don’t have the drive to simplify. I’m always more satisfied when the world is more complex than I realize, and when I have to discard the rules I make.

Then, there’s this overwhelming desire to connect. I’m always hunting for new facts, but I’m not a sponge. I don’t haphazardly absorb information. I have to take this information and connect it to my current network of information. The more places it connects, the more valuable it is. But even if it does not connect to much now, I know it will later. Everything is connected to everything.

Work eats up so much time. Then, after the commute I have to spend time unwinding and then eating. I get very few hours to do anything after this. If I see my friends, then that entire evening is gone. If I work on my comic, most of the evening is gone. In fact, I’ve begun drawing during my lunch break because I simply can’t make enough time to do the comic and see my friends. These past few weekends, I’ve been gone from the house completely. While I regret none of this (I had a fantastic time), I do find it frustrating that I don’t have time to do the things I want to do.

What are these things I want to do? One: Quiet reflection time. I need to continue this introspection, but I need a serious block of uninterrupted time to do it. Yes, I’ve started a bit now, but it’s late and I have to wake up early, which weighs heavily on my mind and doesn’t allow me to write freely. I should’ve had time today, but I just watched TV and then worked on my comic. I also had to backup my laptop because I imagine it will die by the end of next month. I have to buy myself a new one. Agh. Two: Reading. I didn’t finish one book during the month of December. Okay, I did manage to half-read several books. Still, being a voracious reader who delves into disparate topics is something I want to part of my identity. I need to spend time reading actual books and not just clips on the internet. Three: Making a website for my friend’s company. I want to use a weekend for this, but I keep having things to do. I was gone the past two weekends, busy the ones before that, and I’ll be gone a week from now. Maybe this weekend I’ll have some time — of course, my friend’s birthday thing is Saturday, so that’ll suck up time again. During the weekdays, I spend all day at work in front of the computer, so I don’t really feel like doing any web design after I’m off the clock.

It sounds like I’m complaining. I guess I am. I don’t want anyone to think that I begrudge all the time I spend with friends or even with the television. It’s just really difficult finding a balance.

I’m not sure what to think about work. I don’t particularly enjoy everything I’m doing. Programming isn’t too bad, though. I’m not overly-stressed. It’s also respectable, so it sounds good when I tell other people, and I’m making okay money. I still want to find something more exciting, though.

Today, I signed up for an online savings account that gives me a much better interest rate than my Wells Fargo savings account. I also signed up for electronic payment on my student loan, which will give me a quarter of a point discount on interest.

Am I boring if I’m excited about that? Yes, slightly. I guess what makes it exciting is that I’m starting to take charge of my own financial situation. Growing up, I guess.

Speaking of finance, I now have things I actually want to save for, instead of small sums of money just stuffed somewhere. I want a laptop, a tailor-made suit, and a car. In that order, I think. I also want more clothes, but I really want a tailor-made suit.