Monday 28 January 2008

Thought of the day

James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones note in their book Lean Thinking: "many customers only know how to ask for some variant of what they are already getting".
Is not the same true of many inventors? Who has produced or is producing true innovation? Who is generating ideas that are not quite yet possible, but just might be?

Friday 25 January 2008

Summary documents

Often in the workplace, employees are given the task reviewing a document and summarising it for their managers. This work would be made easier with a piece of software (perhaps a plugin to a word processor) that brings together all the text you have highlighted in a document into another document, allowing titles, table and comments to be added. The summary document would also link back to the original document such that if you click on some text that was highlighted from the original, you are taken to the original to see the context of that text.

Monday 21 January 2008

Do not work for someone else

  • Work because of the money
  • Work because work is good for you
  • Work because you find it interesting/challenging (if you do)

Technocentric society

The ideal society, it seems to me, would be one whos prime function was to extend the limits of human knowledge and ability. All other functions would exist to support research and development (e.g finance, retail, resource gathering & processing, etc).

The source of stress

The source of stress (at least for me at the moment) seems to be the gap between other people's expectations of me and what I am able to do: I am expected to have an attention span that lasts the working day...

Sunday 13 January 2008

Heightened state of conciousness

It occured to me that perhaps our individual purpose and that of society is the pursuit of a higher state of consciousness. We can pursue it individually through diet, exercise, sleep, caffeine (and nicotene), study/mental challenge, meditation and music. However we tend to go for a lower state of consciousness through escapism (TV, reading, films) and dulling our mind (alcohol). As a society we can pursue a higher state of consciousness through science and technology (brain enhancing drugs/gene therapy, and computing).

Cynicism and skepticism

Cynicism, in the modern sense, is a symptom of weakness; we don't have the strength to take the time and effort to see the good in things. Skepticism is a sign of strength, of having the balls to question that which others might blindly accept.