Discovering the Darker Side

Saturday morning as I continue to hide under my covers pretending to be in need of another 12 hours of sleep, I hear my Dad bellowing at my sisters downstairs to change the channel. Apparently they have been watching the Family Channel, getting another view of non-reality, watching spoiled kids who have no responsibility demonstrate a complete lack of any sense. My Dad wants them to get a dose of scientific reality so they don't end up living at home until they are thirty because they are unable to survive in the real world. "Channel 42 or shut it off. Watch something that's going to expand your mind not shrink it" he warns. So my younger sister flips it to Discovery and starts to watch Mayday. Great. Just as we are planning for a trip to Florida she is seeing planes falling out of the sky, people screaming, and rescue workers trying to save the mortally wounded. Ooops. Try again Dad.

Later that day we come back from a nice girls-only outing and my Dad is doing some work on his computer watching Discovery - his favourite show - apparently trying to expand his mind. Destroyed in Seconds is just ending with Deadliest Catch close on its heels. How is this expanding his or our minds? I am told that Discovery has been providing factual information for 15 years focusing on the science and nature of things. Well I do recognize that Physics is playing a role in Destroyed In Seconds and nature is somehow connected to the killing of innocent crabs in Deadliest Catch, but I still don't fully understand what shows like mayday are teaching us. Not to get on a plane perhaps?

Sure there are some cool things like How Its Made that demonstrates human ingenuity, and Myth Busters that does use the scientific method to try and disprove ridiculous beliefs which is all great for education, but then along comes Machines of Malice that shows how humans have invented and experimented until they find the best way to kill each other. Nice.

In small doses, Discovery can provide a look at things we might otherwise not have learned about while watching the sitcoms, drams, and music videos, however parents may want to reconsider what they are requiring their children to watch when they recommend channel 42.

When I am reading, the words transform into pictures, sounds, colours and smells. All of my senses are alive and I experience my own movie as told by the author and interpreted by me. It's kind of like a 3-D iMovie that is built from clips and phrases and images but seen in only my mind. When I fold down the corner at night to mark my place, I press pause on the movie, with anticipation of what the next scene will hold, and begin to dream of the possibilities. I can take days, weeks, or months to complete a book spanning many hours in an unlimited number of locations. I can reread sections and paint new colours on my mind-screen filling in details that were missed on the first pass. I am unlimited in my ability to explore, invent, and believe the emotion, fear, or fact. It is only me and the author. My mind is the place where their works are presented, and there is only one ticket sold to the show.

Compare this experience to that of a movie presented in a theatre. We have all stood in line for to long, to buy a ticket to the hottest show-of-the-moment and to sit on a sticky seat while trying to figure out what that girl in front of us has in her hair, while we wait to be entertained. The director has read the script, which was written by a person who has read the book, written by a person who has researched the topic, and edited by a guy who needed to make sure the idea would sell to investors and ultimately a population of screaming fans. Now the director has taken liberties throughout the shooting of the film to make it exciting enough to have a great trailer, that would attract the fans to the theater. But the cutting room floor is littered with sequences that the producers have rejected and others that just took too long to get to the point. What's left is a media driven rendition of the story that in the end does not represent the original intentions of the author.

Alright, Taylor Lautner has great abs and I might or might not have imagined them quite so great, but I could have lingered over them and changed my impressions as many times as I desired. I want to be able to create my own dreams of the great stories, and not experience a watered down version of an executive from Paramount.

"Did you know?"

Exponential times. Right now I barely know what an exponent is or how to apply it and, by the calculations presented, it won't be relevant anyway by the time I finish this blog. But, hey, these are the best years of our lives. Right? Right. Think of the possibilities.

My parents parents were farmers who could never have imagined what we take for granted everyday. We will be those farmers, harvesting information with bits and bytes instead of sowing seeds, in comparison to what our grandchildren will be learning and experiencing. But if we look carefully at the information presented, there is an underlying responsibility on us to make it all happen. By 2049, for a thousand bucks we have to have built a computer that is smarter that the entire human race - combined. Well I suppose that means that someone somewhere thinks we can build that intelligent device, so we better get started. Not sure that I am stepping up to start the construction of this beauty, but it does make me realize that there is a lot riding on what I learn right now, every minute, every day.

There was the industrial revolution in 1900 and the world developed all of the ways, means and infrastructure we now use today to create the next growth phase - the information revolution. We no longer have to toil physically with our bodies, but the expectation is that we will use our brains. Imagine the possibilities that lay before us if we can just muster the courage to believe in ourselves and be the ones that find new ways to use the terabytes to help ourselves and others explore the human potential. Gone are the days of isolation and ignorance. We can never again use the always available excuse "I don't know." All we have to do is open our minds, take it all in, explore the possibilities, and create a future. Never in the history of the human race has anyone been in our position. We have an opportunity to believe in our dreams and make them a reality.

In these times, all we have to do is dream exponentially.