devmorgan.com

*buzz*

Off goes my cell phone again with another text message.

I have an addiction. My addiction is to data, to communication, to the internet, to technology. This is not uncommon for people that are in the computing industry. The real question is how dangerous is this addiction? The ways we socially interact have changed. We connect in a virtual space, on a virtual medium all the time now. I am not sure if this is good or bad, but it is what it is.

I am apart of the iGeneration. We are wired, connected, and on the tubes constantly. I got into a discussion with my mother the other day about packing. I basically told her that the only things I must make sure I bring on a trip are my wallet, my cell phone, my keys, and my laptop bag.

To be fair, a quick glance inside my laptop bag includes these items:

• Wacom intuos tablet
• Garmin nuvi 350 GPS
• PowerShot SD630
• Thinkpad T60p
• A bunch of power adapters

This is what I consider essential to my being. Notice how I didn’t mention clothing. That was not a mistake. While having clothes is nice - I don’t feel that I need to have them packed, since I can purchase them if I forget anything. Yes. I travel with clothes, I just don’t get worked up if I forget a pair of socks or a shirt. The point I guess is that more then half of what I really care about when traveling is technology… ways to stay connected.

This is hyperconnection. A reliance on the technologies that keep the world connected. As a people, our world has changed, and some of us have latched on to all the technology and can’t let go. We must have our instant gratification technologies… We tweet, we facebook, we instant message, we subscribe, we text. We do all of these things and this is what life is for us: Technology, Communication and Information.

Try this: How many times do you check your cell phone a day? How many times do you check social network? How often do you check your Google Reader? E-mail?

How do you feel when you are without one or all of your technologies? Do you feel like something is missing? Do you feel perfectly fine? If the former, you might be hyperconnected. Don’t worry. Being hyperconnected isn’t necessarily a bad thing. By it’s nature you are accustom to digesting massive amounts of information quickly. You tend to be more in tune with recent happenings of your areas of interest. You are also usually in touch with more people in your social network then others. The quality of the relationship may not be as great, but you are certainly more aware of recent updates then others.

What do we lose when we are hyperconnected? The short of the answer is fullness. We become masters of the connection, but not the node. While we might be able to accept more information in a shorter time, we have less time to really process all of that information. Think wider not deeper. While still connected to your social network - how much value is in every relationship you have? I try hard to keep meaningful relationships with everyone that is in my social network, but the truth is I only have a few good friends, but hundreds of acquaintances. Sure - if I run into someone at a party, I’ll be able to make conversation, but I won’t be able to hold much more then that. Of course, if someone asks me about someone in my social network - I might have a remarkable amount of information about that connection.

This concept has been running through my head for years now, and I hope that I will find more time to write about it. I gave a talk at BarCampRochester3 and received a lot of feedback talking about just the differences in the generation gap between e-mail and instant messaging. This topic is ripe for discussion, and I hope to continue it. Let me know!

Are you Hyperconnected?

So. In an attempt to keep myself occupied today during layovers and waiting in the airport, I’ll write about my graduation.

Why not, right?

So, I graduated… again. Of course, in true style, I still am not actually done with my grad degree. I still have a couple independent studies ahead of me and my capstone project. Alas this is nothing new, as I also “graduated” my undergrad degree early as well.

Anyway, I hate graduations. Why? Let me count the ways:

1. You have to say goodbye to friends.
2. You (usually) have to move.
3. You have to start thinking about the future.

Saying goodbye is never fun. A friend of mine wrote a note in facebook, asking the question: “Who would willingly spend several years of their life building a new group of friends and family in a place far away from home, and then at the end of those years, leave?” It’s a good question. I know the chances of seeing a lot of the people I saw every day ever again is quite low. Now it’s easier than ever to keep in touch, but like my old roommate, sometimes communication completely breaks down. It’s a damn shame, but it’s apart of life.

Moving sucks. Lets put that out there right now. In the past 2 years, I’ve moved six times. Six. Friggin. Times. Moving gives you some time to be nostalgic, going through the stuff in your life as you pack it all up. This time while packing up, I was remembering the parties and fun that had happened at the apartment… something that will not likely occur again to the same scope or scale. Oh well.

Now, I know we are supposed to think about our futures before we are walking across the stage for graduation, but once you shake the hands - its official (almost), you have to get a real job. I know in the fall I will be going back to StormFrog, but it’s always scary thinking about where you want to end up. Do I really want to be a code monkey all my life? Do I want to become more ‘business-y’ even if it means more money? Do I still want to end up in Boston? Who knows.

Well. Flight is about ready to board. Maybe I’ll write more or draw a comic on a layover.

So, I guess I will preface this by saying it may offend some people. I apologize now, but this is something that I really didn’t think I would have to deal with in this day and age.

I guess I should be giving some grounding to all of this, I am an Agnostic. I was raised Roman Catholic, but moved away from that faith when I was in high school, much to the initial dismay of my parents. I believe the word my mother used to describe me was “Satanist” (which, I am not, nor ever will be a worshiper of Satan. In fact, contrary to popular belief, not believing in Christ does NOT make you a Satanist). My religious belief change was not really much of a factor on the people a hung out with. In fact, few of my girlfriends minded, and most of my friends didn’t seem to mind either. In fact, they usually asked me why I became Agnostic… to which I promptly replied “I learned about other religions”.

Now, I should probably clear something up right now. A person’s beliefs are different then a person’s religion. You can believe that Jesus or Mohammad were good people, and their teachings were (in general) good for human kind, and not be Christian of Muslim. Religion is the social structure that is built around particular beliefs. This structure is almost never necessary, but it allows people to be able to unite and say “I am Hindu”, and be able to make certain assumptions about their lifestyle and beliefs because they become standardized in this social structure.

This is why I can say I am an Agnostic (while Agnosticism is not a religion, the word can be used in similar contexts). With that term, you learn some things about me. You can make the assumption that I believe it is impossible to know if there is a God, or if there isn’t. You can also determine that I believe that there is no earthly way for us to ever know if a God exists. You also learn that this flips both ways, because this also means there is no way to prove there is not a God either. If Agnosticism were a religion, you would also be able to derive some inherent moral code from my belief, but it’s not.… anyway, enough about Agnosticism, I could go on for hours.

So, why am I even bringing up religion? When I first got to college, religion wasn’t even an issue for me. It just never really played a role. Well, over the past 6-8 months, several people I have hung out with, met, and socialized with have been religious, and with that, there has come some issues. The girl that I am dating now identifies herself as a Christian. To me, and to her, our religious differences is not a big deal. Unfortunately, this is not always shared by people around her. Yesterday, I had met a friend of hers that she was staying with for the week. After I had left, and Jess had come back from the trip we took yesterday, her friend asked her if I was a Christian. Jess replied that I was an Agnostic. The response (which Jess later revealed) was appalling to me:

Oh Jess, don’t worry. We’ll find you a nice, Christian boy one of these days.

I almost threw up in my mouth after hearing this. I was mad, upset and angry. It is appalling to hear something like this, but it doesn’t surprise me. The problem with religious people, is they don’t understand differences. I have asked people who are very religious about what other religions they have studied. I am usually amused when a Lutheran replies “Oh, I’ve studied lots of religions. Catholicism, Baptism, and Orthodox Christianity”. Right. Lots of religions. For those of you who didn’t notice, those are all essentially the same belief system, just different social structure around each of them. If you want to get mad because I just called Catholics essentially the same as Lutherans, go for it, but only after you study Judaism, Islam (edited for clarity: the Abrahmaic religions), Hinduism (edited for clarity: a non-Abrahamic religion), and a few other non-Abrahamic religions.

It’s so troubling for me to believe that even in America, people don’t understand that difference is good. We see it all the time though, families getting upset if a child marries inter-racially, or outside of their class. Religion is just another social element that is around to for people to become bias against. I firmly believe that if people were to actually study the beliefs and religion of others, they would become more tolerant to other belief systems. Religious tolerance does not mean that you believe that other religions are total truth, but that you can accept that other religions can have legitimate belief systems, even though they are different then your own.

It makes me sad, that people can dismiss others as insignificant based on a difference of religious belief. Religion brings to the table certain elements that some people want, and others don’t. This is how someone can choose a religion (which I highly recommend, over inheriting a religion from your family). The worst thing that someone can do is merely accept the religion they have as total truth without at least understanding that there are differences out there, and they aren’t evil.

So, at last I will get to my point: Religious intolerance is dumb. People that perpetrate the intolerance are usually uninformed about what they are being intolerant towards. There is absolutely no more evidence that your religion is better then their religion. So please, go out, and learn about other religions. Understand why people believe what they believe. What makes their religion attractive? What are parallels you can draw between the religions you study and your own? Knowledge is power.

This weekend I went to a concert here on campus, it featured Paramore and Jimmy Eat World. I am actually a fan of both bands, so I was very happy to go and see them. Overall the show was amazing, and it really made me think about the concept of energy.

Energy is exactly what myself and many of my classmates are going to need over the next couple weeks. As the quarter starts to come to an end, coursework and stress levels begin to rise. When I was at the concert, I was noticing two different kinds of energy coming from Paramore and Jimmy Eat World. Paramore’s energy clearly comes from their performance capability. Moving around on stage, feeling the music and looking the part. Jimmy Eat World’s energy was different. They had less of the charisma, but the energy came from the music. You could feel the energy with each beat, and they were able to sound the part. To be honest, at the end of the show, I felt energized. It made me feel like I can make it through the next few weeks. Kinda cliche, but it was a great feeling.

So, the real question is, how do you keep this energy? How does one make it through the stress of the end of the quarter, and even worse, the end of the last quarter. I have never really figured it out. I usually start burning out at the very end no matter what I try. I have had some good ideas to make it through the crunch time, but I think the best thing you can do is remember to relax. Replenish your energy when you can. If that means going out to a concert, do it. If it means having a few drinks with friends on Thursday night, do it. Making it through with a healthy mind is far more important than grades.

At least, that’s what I say now. Lets see if I am saying the same thing when week 10 rolls around, and I end up like last quarter, sick with the flu, having chills and barely being able to remain coherent, but still coding for a final project.

I find that I don’t ask myself this question enough.

No, I am not getting myself into any bad situations, but I think every now and then you should try to step back and examine where you are in life. What decisions do you make that put you on the path that you are currently following. I tend to hope that nothing I do now will ever put me on such a poor path that I regret it, but you never know for sure.

I could go on and on about how one can examine life, and choose the ‘moral’ routes, or the ‘right’ routes. I can go on about how some people use religion as their guide, and others use the community that they are in. Really, that only thing that I feel is important is that you can step outside of yourself and take a look, ask yourself “What the hell am I getting myself in to?”, and answer truthfully. If you are happy with your answer, then the path you are on will be the right one.

Trust me.

Laughter Everywhere.

Some people may be satisfied with the yearly Google prank, but not us. The idea to pull off some kind of April Fools joke was discussed as far back as December. Of course, we didn’t plan much, but I think it has turned out great… so… here is how it all went down:

Coming up with names for as many professors as possible was really hard. We should have thought about it more then we did, but with three of us, we came up with about 90% of the target names. Professors we had no experience with were generally left out because we didn’t know much about them, or what they would find ‘funny’. Names ranged all over the place, from simple nicknames and titles like “Resident Hippie | Weez” to “Minivan Driver | Humpty Dumpty”. Overall, the names took about 3 hours to come up with, but I think it was worth it.

The next step was putting the signs up. Mike, Zack and I walked around the floor and started putting the signs up. We only ended up having to reprint 2 signs due to typos… that we noticed. Putting the signs up was actually a lot of fun because we started to really see the scope of what we were doing.

We finished about 1:30am, and headed home. Overall the entire process for the night took a little over 4 hours. Not to bad considering. The only downside was that we don’t usually come in until much later in the day, so for now the plan was for me to wake up early and come see the reactions…

I walked in to building 70 at about 9:15am. I headed up the stairs and started walking towards the grad lab- I mean the “I CAN HAZ TUTORING” room. I got about halfway down the hall, then I heard a voice saying “Yeah, they’ve all changed”. Immediately a smile came. It was going to be a success, I could just tell from the sound in the voice. I started walking around, and I would run in to the occasional professor walking around the halls looking at all the signs. All smiling. Giggles here and there.

Some of the professors immediately could tell I was partially behind it, I mean, why else would I be in 70 before noon… carrying a camera and snickering? I walked back to my lab, waiting patiently for Deb to see her new sign. A few seconds later, I hear her laugh from around the corner. Got her! I walk down the hall to see her facial reaction. She knew it was me right away. I look down the hall and I start to see something I didn’t expect… people taking pictures. First I saw Dr. Kang taking a picture of his sign, then I saw a student walking down taking pictures as well.

What a great success!

Even as I write this blog entry, I can hear laughter as people walk by. Every now and then a good chuckle. The best part, is laughter lifts the spirits. I am happy to be here today, and everyone that is doing their walk around the building is smiling and giggling. I wonder how long everyone will keep their signs up? :).

Thanks to Zack Panitzke and Mike Galey for helping make this prank possible. You guys rock.

P.S. To any professors that might read this, Mike is up for a GA position next year — you should support him!

Yep. Another one.

It starts, you toss and turn in bed… and then, the synapses start firing, you have an idea. Sure, it’s a good idea, but not even anything new. You’ve thought it before… but now your brain is thinking about it, more and more.

You turn over, trying to get the rest you know you need… but your brain doesn’t want rest anymore, it wants to keep going. Quickly, you try to tell yourself “It’s too late” or “I have to be up early”, but your brain doesn’t care… it is about to make you the most motivated person on the planet.

You fight the urge to get out of bed, but you are going to lose. You appease yourself by writing down the idea that you are obsessing on, perhaps if you take down the notes, your brain will let you sleep.

No. It doesn’t.

You find yourself tossing and turning once again, what seems like moments later. This time, it’s a different idea. It’s not even an idea anymore, its possibilities. What-ifs on paths that you never walked. Clearly, these are the things that dreams are made of, but they are too strong to happen in dreamland, they must be considered in your conscious state. You let your mind wander. Perhaps if you let your thoughts play out in your mind it will let you doze off. What seems like hours, but at the same time, moments, pass on… the thoughts progress away.

Letting the ideas play out, you start to get drowsy, maybe the sleep is on the way… but then, a new idea comes in. Your brain starts rushing with concepts, designs, excitement. The urge to create, the drive to proceed. You are afraid to even look at the clock, already knowing you are going to get less sleep then you need.

You try every trick you know to put your body to sleep, but your brain is simply to active. Despite not wanting to know, you look at the clock to decide if its past the point of no return. The moment somewhere between 3 and 6 am where it isn’t worth it to goto bed anymore.

It’s coming up on that moment… but the mind just will not let you sleep. The urge to be creative, the drive to design something is too great. Victory is not yours to be had tonight, the brain will win. You sit up and cultivate the idea. You draw, you write, and you ponder more, and more.

It’s another one of those nights. In reality, these are the nights that spark imagination, invention, and innovation… rare occurrences that should be praised and embraced. Of course, they cannot be, because you must consider the repercussions of disturbing the pattern of the next day by losing sleep.

And then, it stops.

Your brain gives in, and stops working in overdrive. Now you must decide, it is time to sleep, or is it time to work.

Sleep.

It’s something that I have done a lot of over the past week.

I find breaks very amusing. I don’t really travel too much, so I look at a break as an excellent time to get work done. I know, I know, I am weird.

So this break I had a list of things to do…

1. Get healthy
2. Work on independent study
3. Finish up capstone proposal
4. Rest

Well, the first one is sorta completed. I still have a little bit of a cough, but I am no longer sick. A warning to all: Do not get the flu on finals week. It sucks.

I was able to complete a little bit of work on the independent study that I have been working on… of course, I only got the work done today, and there is still a lot to do.

Yeah. Capstone proposal didn’t even get looked at.

Rest… now… I got lots of rest. I slept at least 12 hours a day, every day. Holy crap. I don’t know if I can go back to a normal sleep pattern now. However, the down side to doing this is that I really got very little done…. but I got rest… and that was the goal, right?
I wish I could have blogged more. Perhaps I will soon. I have a few comic ideas too. Here’s to week 1!

Sometimes I wish I could change the world as easily as I can change a computer program.

I don’t think the time will ever come that we can do this to change the world… However, I will always hope there will be new releases every few weeks that make more progress and make it better.

Thanks Elvis for the concept.

I have the flu. I don’t have time to sleep. I have major projects to finish.

This sucks.

I hope to post again when I am through this hell.