digital camera's again.

INTERFACE YOUR LIFE.

As the days of web 1.0 leave us behind, 2.0 finds itself stuck in the shadows, and web 3.0 emerges to resounding cheers of glee and approval; we may find ourselves, "outdating" ourselves in our own worlds and surroundings. So finally my inbox is clutter-free, and my homepage has exactly what I need to see, nothing more, nothing less. I get the news I need, the weather report, the sports scores from specific teams, etc.. and I'm never burdened by a blockade of distractions right? Well usually wrong. And that's point number 2 about internet and digital presence and perception. Point number one happens to be about your everyday life. How often lately have you thought about organizing your personal space? Your room, your desk at the office.. the route you take to work, or to stop by the store on the way back? My argument is that people are forgetting their old routines that were efficient for getting things done in the everyday world.. the real world that is. Who cares if you see a target on the way home from work, you've got target.com at your fingertips when you get up to the apartment and grab a cool beer from the fridge. Maybe you'll waste 30 minutes browsing and not even buying what you'd intended upon.. but who has the time for regret when that overstock.com ad you clicked 5 minutes ago got you interested in digital cameras again!

Why twitter sucks

About the attention span of the average 21st century digital boy.
About the insatiable demand to shine.
Why you can't succeed in a day, and succeed the next.

precursor: I only use boy in reference to the Bad Religion song that has allowed the phrase to stick in my mind over the years; I do not aim to focus this topic on males alone; for it is a gender universal phenomenon.

I can only begin writing this with the admittance that I am currently a victim of, "a stratified sense of being" created by the endless jetsam and flotsam propagated within my browser windows and limited only by the ever expanding internet itself.
I find the line break between thoughts necessary as a way to keep writing without losing my overall train of thought. Perhaps as a side benefit, I'll retain some of your attention should you share the illness I have.
How nice of microsoft word to automatically add a space between paragraphs of the same format... is there even such a thing as a paragraph anymore? In just the letters and characters of this one, I've gone way beyond a standard, "tweet".
(God forbid the extra 50 characters, and all I've got is 2 and a half lines. Isn't a paragraph supposed to have four?!?)


Anyways

Why Twitter Sucks
Most of us know why twitter sucks. I'll spare you my own opinion in order to give you just that.
If you're still reading, thankyou. Well I guess that's all I get.... (had this been a tweet or whatever)
I'll summarize this as a bit of a treatise on the declining attention span of the average kid on the streets. Make note that the average kid no longer grows up on the streets, or anywhere else physically. The 21st century digital boy grows up on the internet. The things he grows up with are facebook, youtube, twitter; and I'll go ahead and include the next, "nameless for now", breakout social network. I imagine the same thoughts will hold true in its case. I'm not going to be the guy that tries to make dramatic metaphors for the decline of society i.e. "kids don't play catch with a ball, they play catch with text messages" or something. The fact is, I could try and be on the bleeding edge of this sort of criticism, but it's already being done.. probably 3 seconds ago; while I actually spend time trying to prepare some sort of a new argument.
In my eyes, twitter was a necessary evil in our path to becoming connected citizens of the world. It showed us that we can communicate in real-time on a massive scale; and that even our smallest thought of thoughts will be noticed if we can get it out there fast enough. Twitter has allowed many would-be-bloggers to simply get out there and write something. It has especially empowered those who couldn't be bothered to sign up for an actual blog, much less go out and have a conversation with somebody in the real world about a topic that interests them.
While I'm the ever fan of newfound connectedness and flow between people who need to share ideas, I can't help but find the norm of this type of communication trivial as an initial observation. Submitting a tweet not only cuts of your creative juices and never allows you to get into the, "flow" of being creative or coming up with a complete thought; it celebrates the simple accomplishment of stating what's on your mind; if you even call that an accomplishment. Once you hit, submit or tweet or whatever, you're allowed to sit back, and wait for responses to the fact that you had an amazing taco for dinner, but it didn't have enough cheese, i love cheese, monterey jack is the best, oh I loved that show with that guy.. what was it? Rescue rangers! aww yeah! here's a youtube video of that shit from back in the day! Awesome!
So all we have now is a free-association type of jetsam/flotsam. And where does it get us back to? Maybe the next bag of cheetos. Every time you are interrupted by a tweet alert your focus goes somewhere entirely different. IN fact, where is your focus at all? Can you even consider yourself having been focused for the last 3 years ??? fuck.
And so I say, "Do not let yourself be limited by the internet medium which happens to take the web by storm; for you are only limited by the medium in which you choose to take the internet by storm."

INTERFACE YOUR LIFE.

INTERFACE YOUR LIFE.

As the days of web 1.0 leave us behind, 2.0 finds itself stuck in the shadows, and web 3.0 emerges to resounding cheers of glee and approval; we may find ourselves, "outdating" ourselves in our own worlds and surroundings. So finally my inbox is clutter-free, and my homepage has exactly what I need to see, nothing more, nothing less. I get the news I need, the weather report, the sports scores from specific teams, etc.. and I'm never burdened by a blockade of distractions right? Well usually wrong. And that's point number 2 about internet and digital presence and perception. Point number one happens to be about your everyday life. How often lately have you thought about organizing your personal space? Your room, your desk at the office.. the route you take to work, or to stop by the store on the way back? My argument is that people are forgetting their old routines that were efficient for getting things done in the everyday world.. the real world that is. Who cares if you see a target on the way home from work, you've got target.com at your fingertips when you get up to the apartment and grab a cool beer from the fridge. Maybe you'll waste 30 minutes browsing and not even buying what you'd intended upon.. but who has the time for regret when that overstock.com ad you clicked 5 minutes ago got you interested in digital cameras again!

Why to vote for.

What do you see yourself as in regards to the collective being of humanity? I guess if you even stop to think about this question, you’re probably already voting for Obama. Cheers, but I’ll get to you later. Firstly, I have this burning question for the folks on the other side. What holds you back from the beauty of a unified version of humanity? I can’t help but assume it’s obvious to anyone who takes the time to think about our future as the human race. United we stand, divided we fall. We’ve created a world with too much power, too much influence, and too many opinions abound to stay in a stable state. There are those that think a certain group should take the power, and rule the world so that no type of rebel group could ever have the strength for an uprising or overthrowing of the power. The thing is; as the world evolves and grows evermore complex, even the most comprehensive precautions cannot cover all the bases of some sort of rebel or terrorist plot. It’s like an equation that should theoretically reach zero but never does. No matter how much information gathering or preventative measures can be instigated, an active type of hatred left opposed and misunderstood will never cease to exist. Governments of westernized countries go on about their lives like they actually think they understand other people. If we scare them enough, then they won’t do anything about our oppressive nature. It’s the classic story of the middle school bully who overpowers the nerds until they come from behind in the most unexpected manner and put the fatty on his back. You may say it’s sophomoric to call the U.S. a bully in a middle school world, but you know what, in a very real sense, this is how it is. I don’t even care to finish this part of my argument.. I have extreme pride and faith in the ideals that our founders set before us as Americans.. A country of mixed race, ideas, cultures, traditions, and ideals. I’m excited for the cream to rise to the top and for a wave of understanding to take over. A presidential election is not just about what face becomes president and what voice becomes our leading representative. it’s about which ideals of the American people rise over the top and start to mold a sort of policy; domestic and international, that can be respected by the objective observer and appreciated for what they stand for. I stand for hope, I stand for togetherness, I stand for peace. I stand for education, I stand for equal rights. I stand for collaboration in all senses of the word, I stand for pleasure, I stand for elatedness. I stand for you and I stand for me. But most of all, I sit in my chair comfortable and content, because I know the world is changing. And I sleep tonight in the same state of confidence; a sleep filled with nostalgic dreams comprised of the wonders of what has been and what will be. And this ecstatic dream state I’m in cannot possibly be created by myself alone or even those who stand with me.. It’s got to be us all, in it for each other.

And that’s why I’m voting for the man who could at least understand half of this.
This could never be a perfect letter, but there’s never been a more perfect time for it.
Sincerely,
The undersigned, and the underexpressed.Get out the vote.

The Psych of Matt

So this has been a long time coming. I've thought and thought about what I would do with my first blog post, and I even wrote it out in a far too long declaration of this blog, what it was about and why I'm writing it.. perhaps I'll attach that afterwards if anyone's interested. But I figured, "why worry too much about the details, the setup, and the small things, I should just start blogging." The constant improvement of a website or blog is what makes it worth checking back for anyways right? A blog is supposed to be my thoughts going right from my mind to cyberspace, so I might as well preserve the candidness and just start typing.
Anyways, for a time reaching back to my early high-school days, I've had thoughts and theories about the world, the universe, and those of us who inhabit it. I've never really had an outlet for this roller coaster of ideas and questions that run through my mind daily, and almost out of necessity, I've decided to start writing, letting people see what I think, hearing back from others and hopefully learning something along the way. People have probably heard about me trying to write a book summarizing my ideas, and out of the hundreds of pages of journals and random word documents I've filled over the years, I probably could; its just that writing a blog seems to make more sense. The thing about writing for myself was that I rarely had the benefit of anyone reading my notes. Most of my motivation for writing derives from a need to help other people understand and make the most of their lives, and before this, I wasn't seeing any of that happen. I needed a fresh, organized approach towards defining how I see the world and a way to share it with others; hopefully this is it.
I like to try my mind on all sorts of topics, from psychology, to stimulation, to the meaning of life, but there's one that ties everything together and is what I'll probably always base my writing on. It's simply happiness; all of its synonyms, how to achieve it, and why we need it as a species. The great thing about human happiness is that it almost always helps other people get happy along the way, it's a contagious thing, the vibrating human spirit. To share my thoughts, I could write a book, I could go to grad school and publish scholarly articles that might enlighten .005 percent of you, but instead I think I'll do it like this. This isn't your regular textbook psychology, it's just my open-minded approach towards defining how the world can thrive based what I've observed and what I think about. It's the psychology of us, it's the psychology of Matt.