Generation Now
There's a great moment in one of my favorite books, Way of the Peaceful Warrior where Socrates asks Dan: "What time is it?" and "Where are you?" After a set of cryptic exchanges, Socrates presents the answer clearly:
The time is NOW, and you are HERE
Even more profound, Dan is sent off to ponder something worthwhile to say and after many failed attempts, he comes back with a simple message:
There are no ordinary moments.
These proclamations could be easily applied to the state of the web world today that we are seeing evolve around us. We are living in the NOW generation, where everything is available at an instant and it's easier to connect immediately with the news, your friends, family, strangers, neighbors and distant colleagues than ever before.
Fred Wilson blogged this morning about his twitter experience in a post entitled Broadcasting Your Status.
Oddly enough, this title reminded me of a line from a song called "Drink of Streams" by Tea Leaf Green's Trevor Garrod where he sings:
Seek the ill winded backbone masses
Their eyes are blazing with broadcasted static
And their jaws are snapping
They got hungry stomachs and they’re fixing for their latest habits
Is it status or static? I guess it depends on who's talking and who's listening.
The song is a response to an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson who was a Transcendentalist, so it all kind of comes together.
Maybe the reason this whole Web 2.0 concept is getting so much buzz and traction is that as human beings, we feel a need to connect, as well as a certain growing sense of guilty pleasure from just consuming all day long. By producing content, we can feel important, like we're contributing to the discourse and not just sitting on our couches absorbing the world in front of us. Even if we're just telling people what we're doing at this instant, we still feel like we're adding to the collective conversation.
We watched the Adam Sandler movie "Click" last night. Thinking it was going to be a nice mindless way to wash away a tough Thursday night and an even tougher week of news, I was hit pretty quickly by the bigger theme throughout. Many of us live our lives on auto-pilot and fast-forward through the difficult, yet important stuff in our minds. Eventually we end up just racing to the next station until we look back and find ten years have got behind you...
Ok, that's enough for now...
The time is NOW, and you are HERE
Even more profound, Dan is sent off to ponder something worthwhile to say and after many failed attempts, he comes back with a simple message:
There are no ordinary moments.
These proclamations could be easily applied to the state of the web world today that we are seeing evolve around us. We are living in the NOW generation, where everything is available at an instant and it's easier to connect immediately with the news, your friends, family, strangers, neighbors and distant colleagues than ever before.
Fred Wilson blogged this morning about his twitter experience in a post entitled Broadcasting Your Status.
Oddly enough, this title reminded me of a line from a song called "Drink of Streams" by Tea Leaf Green's Trevor Garrod where he sings:
Seek the ill winded backbone masses
Their eyes are blazing with broadcasted static
And their jaws are snapping
They got hungry stomachs and they’re fixing for their latest habits
Is it status or static? I guess it depends on who's talking and who's listening.
The song is a response to an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson who was a Transcendentalist, so it all kind of comes together.
Maybe the reason this whole Web 2.0 concept is getting so much buzz and traction is that as human beings, we feel a need to connect, as well as a certain growing sense of guilty pleasure from just consuming all day long. By producing content, we can feel important, like we're contributing to the discourse and not just sitting on our couches absorbing the world in front of us. Even if we're just telling people what we're doing at this instant, we still feel like we're adding to the collective conversation.
We watched the Adam Sandler movie "Click" last night. Thinking it was going to be a nice mindless way to wash away a tough Thursday night and an even tougher week of news, I was hit pretty quickly by the bigger theme throughout. Many of us live our lives on auto-pilot and fast-forward through the difficult, yet important stuff in our minds. Eventually we end up just racing to the next station until we look back and find ten years have got behind you...
Ok, that's enough for now...
posted by Andy at
9:51 AM
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