while in china, i could never manage to bring up the new york times web site, and so i watched cnn more than i normally would, although sadly it was the asian version which only provided shallow headline coverage of the usa but did lots of financial news and analysis and mentioned that Facebook is making significant revenue on its new ad policy. and for all that i dislike it myself, it is simply an irritation to me, since now i cant just presume that what i get on my friend is from people i am friends with, and after china, i realize if this is what Facebook needs in order to stay financial healthy in todays marketplace, then its not for me to complain really but i should adjust. i do Facebook for free. it doesnt cost me a thing, and i get great satisfaction, however hallucinatory, in using it. and so, its like television, you have to pay for it somehow. or mobility with all those nonsense ads. if that is what it takes, then i dont see how i can grouse about it without being insensitive to the real world and how unimportant i am to it, as an individual, and how useless it is to anyone how i might feel about it. so getting upset or making snide or superior comments is just a self-indulgence, sound and fury meaning nothing. i am more functional just not being indignant as if Facebook recognizes me as anything but the way i see a mouse ... just an anonymous critical mass out of which they statistically define a character set that fits their critical bell curve of their users, without necessarily reflecting any one person. but that as a users influence in terms of followers becomes critical, then that person does have a say, or must be considered individually. that seems to capture pretty much how most things work with groups of people in which a minority determine the quality of experience within their control. and what i am most conscious of is that once i was a person like that, and feel the loss of that individuality that success or position bestow and which for the most part is not available to people. and to hold on to that doesnt do anything useful; its all heat without work, the very definition of absolute entropy that plagues only those with higher cognitive function, which is pretty useless for probably 80 percent of humanity on this earth on any one time. were all just talking to ourselves, if you think about it. nothing we say has any significance outside the limited range of people that are able to understand it. thats why when alex stepanov became infuriated with me for stating that the standard template library never fully integrated non-contiguous data structures with his what are essentially block algorithms, which is what he called them while he was working beside me when i was doing template and that code was my test base for doing template functions, and he responded by saying that stl was his life work, and i had better shut up. i have the letter he sent me. i didnt answer him but asked him if that was a public letter, and then i would print it and respond then. i felt like he was trying to bully me into being silent, not because he was saying anything, but because he was telling me i had no right to speak, and people have been doing that to me all my life, including andy koenig, and it always is based on the assertion that i am ignorant, and know less than them, largely because andy grew up with a professor as a father, and i grew up with a father who refused to be educated because he was shown has ineffectual being an intellectual is in the real world, because his father had to flee russia in the middle of the night, and had to back down to the president of this or that american synagogue because he had to feed his family. its just very hard when you are not successful to convince people that it isnt intrinsic to your nature, because if they accept that, i think, they would be more uneasy about their own position. i remember edwin leonard, who because CTO of dream works, who told me, everything happens for a reason, as if that isnt the worst self-satisfied tripe of a successful alpha male, and i didnt respond but i wondered for example if my wifes mother who at 16 was taken away by soldiers to dachau what purpose that served, but you know, he wasnt speaking wisdom, but simply expressing his satisfaction with the trajectory of his life. not to single him out, whomever him refers to, except that these are the people my life is entwined with, and so they are the narratives i recall. im kind of suppose in the old man outside life looking back and wondering what sense i can make of it since i no longer seem to making any life that is worth remembering -- again, not in a bad way, but in the way of working memory. it is outside time, whereas body memory is when you affect/effect the world and i dont do that anymore, except i did in china, in my public role, so unusual now, and it reminded me of what power i once had, and have let go of, more or less. it was 8 years ago today that i left microsoft, and have never again held a position of authority. as someone in microsoft mocked me, you havent done too well for yourself since you left, have you? and in material terms, in visible terms, the truth is, he was right. he didnt hurt me by writing that but i understood he wished to hurt me, and that there was no further purpose in pretending we were friends because of a shared past that no longer exists. i dont know how hard a statement that is. but too often younger people fail to recognize or want to believe that others wish you harm, and that is just how it is. too often we compromise ourselves in order to avoid facing that truth about our position in life once our family and friends are lost. there is no replacing love that is unconditional. it never comes again, if you lose it. at least that is how i understand it. unless i finish my writing in a coherent manner, of course, nothing i understand either matters or will persist or mean anything. and that too is just the way it is. i have to keep reminding myself of the cost of not working harder however i might feel about it. none of those feels are real. or as mcCluhan wrote and which is my living quote: nothing is inevitable provided there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. which is just a sophisticated rephrasing of socrates the unexamined life is not with living. however corny that is, or pathetic, i honestly believe that. or at least i believe i do. thats all.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 14:27:34 +0000
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