So I went to bed at midnight and I just woke up (at 3:45am) and I’m not sure why exactly that is, considering how sleepy I was. My eyes are still sensitive to the light (I’m squinting) and my throat is parched (drinking a glass of iced water) but I couldn’t quite get back to sleep, so I thought maybe it might be productive to throw out another word vomit before trying to get back to sleep. Here I am.
I’ve been thinking about things like scale of influence and productivity. I’ve got 434 Likes on my Facebook Page now. Is that impressive? I don’t mean impressive in the “ooh I feel important and it makes my personal ego swell” kinda sense, even though perhaps at the root of it, that’s what it might be- I’m more interested in thinking and talking about the amount of useful influence I can have on people, if that makes sense. I want to make a positive difference to people, and I’ve always thought- with distribution models being the way they are, why would we unnecessarily limit our audience? I’d like to reach out to thousands of people. But yeah, that sounds egoistic, so I’ll just stop at that for now. I need to figure out how to express that in a way that is meaningful. I honestly feel like the conversation will take on a qualitative change when there are more people invested in it.
I was thinking about my Singapore-centric perspective, and how I’d like to eventually do something with global impact. I love my country, I love our food, our lingo, our roads, streets and shores, but I’d also like to love the rest of the planet. I’d love to fall in love with another city or town, or several. I’d love to make a difference somewhere else. How do I know for sure that the place I’m born and raised in is the place I would be best able to contribute to humanity? I will always be a Singaporean at heart to some extent, because so much of my memories and cultural identity belong here, but what could I do for the broader global community? How can I contribute, how can I make a difference to a greater number of people? Are we limiting ourselves when we think local?
At the same time, it helps to have at least a local surge of traffic, that makes you look a bit better on the broader stage. God it feels like I’m continuously talking about impressions rather than depth, like I’m talking about the icing on the cake rather than the cake itself. Let’s flip that around- how can I produce the best content I can possibly produce? How can I share what is most meaningful, valuable and relevant?
I’ve been thinking about progress in the world and I’ve been wondering if we’re really doing everything we possibly can as a species (obviously not). How much faster or more effectively could we be progressing? What are the greatest or “highest-leverage” tasks or quests that we should converge on? Should we lift the lowest-of-the-lowest out of poverty? Focus on education? Women’s rights? On clean water? On disease prevention? Can we afford to focus on one at the expense of others? Can we afford to try and do all at once? What’s the best strategy moving forward, to resolve as many of those issues as quickly and effectively as possible? What is the path to a healthy world? Like, if you’re fat and sick, the first steps are- get hydrated, take walks, take medication if you’re seriously ill, nourish your healthy relationships… I’m sure there are parallels between individual human wellness and collective human wellness.
I’ve been thinking about redundancy and how wasteful it is when people have to do the same thing over and over again. Think about how many lectures are happening around the world in every single school, every single day, when modern technology would allow us to simply share the best possible lecture, over and over again, distributed endlessly. Why not?
There are a few educators who are heads and shoulders above the rest, and it is, to me, outrageously wasteful if their talents and perspectives are limited to a few, especially in this age. I find it sad when people with amazing talents and abilities and gifts to contribute to the world are limited by a lack of distribution.
The whole world should know and celebrate amazing people, and share in their gifts. This should be happening a lot faster, I feel. Our collective enterprise of human learning should be progressing at a much greater rate, with people sharing knowledge far more effectively. Right now it still feels like the main thing we share are cat pictures and cute videos… I want to contribute to a world where we share thoughtfulness, compassion and reason. I understand that these things will probably never light up our caveman brains the way sexy pictures do, but I think it’s worth a shot. We need more passionate educators- no, I don’t even think we really need more, we just need a better and more equitable distribution of the educators that we already have. We already have a lot of amazing, beautiful art in the world, we just need to share it better. We have an abundance of good stuff, but somehow the curation process isn’t moving as quickly as I envision it. Data is shared, but not information- do you know what I mean? People aren’t learning nearly as fast as we could be if we helped each other out, and made it a priority. It’s like we’re using chainsaws to chop down trees, but we haven’t quite figured out how to pull the chain and get it started.
I guess that’s a big picture perspective and the only way to really get moving forward on that is to continually and consistently put stuff out, share important stuff, and go back and forth from big to small.
The Internet is still relatively new. We are only using a small percentage of what it can do. Slowly, we’re using more. But if you’re at the forefront, like you are, it never seems fast enough. It’s not technology that isn’t there, it’s people that need time to adjust.
thanks guus! i don’t think i’m anywhere near the forefront. but you are right about people being more of a limiting factor than technology
Oh you certainly are at the forefront. Not at the forefront as an industry leader or anything – but at the forefront as a user.