However, something went viral to the renaissance, the subjects that I am talking of are: diplomacy, education and scientific observation. I am not going to go into depth about those topics, but it was that at that time, that rules we set to the identity of people have been lifted out, and now people can evaluate those rules without constriction. Of course, there was a lot of times, that people could not express what they wanted to express. But even with those obstacles, the transition was smooth on that direction with revolutions and legislatures that allow people to have freedom of expression where appropriate.
However, all of this is due to the space of automating things. A thing that still exists to this day in the technology sector. In a short span of time, 200-300 years later, we had an industrial revolution. And given machines were not enough to automate our daily physical tasks, our mental tasks 100 years later became automated with computers. The essence of automation is this: How do I eliminate physical/mental tasks to a less of a degree so I can focus more on the content and less on how I do it? This has always been the adage as a part of a vision for many companies. But if we have more time to focus on content (and the fact is that it is), what is the trend of content people want these days to explore? Physical happiness and let me elaborate more onto that.
Physical happiness is probably what you learned of what was opposite from school. Although human nature is driven primarily by physical happiness or the end goal is to achieve physical happiness or practical contributor in terms of mental symmetry, it is not a thing that people predominantly want their whole stake to be out of. People get bored, something is missing, but oh wait, there is something new that can make my mind be a little bit illusive that I am exploring something different but it is the same thing nonetheless. The essence of marketing has taken this and you see the same formula, the same pattern, but in different flavors. I am betting that this endless loop of inertia is what people are driven on their free time. I have been a small victim of this several times and its hard to let your mind not be influenced by it as what you feed your mind is what you believe, like a virtual reality room fabricating reality.
So what is the solution? Mental happiness. The focus should be innovating new stuff not only on just what people want, but how this connected pool of society have a purpose that lasts long term for them, has an impact, and it is associated with their work life. The last point is very important. You see, that a lot of the time was spent on eliminating redundant tasks so people can allocate more free time on creating better content or more sophisticated products or services. On the other hand, the content we explore is listening to data instead of evaluating/controlling/transforming the future of our data. You see, we now live in a new renaissance age, and that is the data age. It is no wonder that a new cognitive module has become more active than ever before because we have the access and possibility of doing so: perceiving data and take actions based on perceived data. But all we do now is follow the data and try to assimilate with the data so it matches with what the supply and demand of the free market is. It does so well on an operational stand point and the projected expected results match with the actual results as most people behave based on the driven motivations of physical happiness. But then you see that there is a dead end. All technology we make and innovate were made so in such way so it "fits" with the demand of physical happiness, in the same way we create shoes that "fits" a human feet and not an animal's feet.
If we humans have time to explore as the productivity of menial tasks have ceased to be a problem anymore, then it is time to explore actions and services that collaborate more on mental happiness. Learning and exploring should not only be about the understanding and use of an infrastructure or a specific trade of tool, but more on the end goal product and service that will impact people. That requires the collaboration of many people to bring those ideas into reality. That requires a lot of transition on the way we look at things not through just our eyes, but beneath our minds. It requires a new renaissance age, such age where people can address more on the cause of all problems, not only just to the physical level, but up to the individualistic level. The road-map to that is uncertain on where it will go as that requires a lot of people to collaborate to bring something tangible. We would never have known the renaissance age would have lead us to the age of computers, in such ways it is arbitrary to say what tangible results this will lend us. All that matters is the direction, and the purpose behind that direction is to make people have a bigger long lasting meaning with life: Mental happiness - Where people at least know the principles of how our own mind simulates and what is its correct path to simulate itself and be guided by that. Bringing something tangible based by a guide of that correct path, is all that matters, its not the matter whether the product output in the end reflects with the correct path or not, but the motivation behind, as that motivation will self-correct the product output. We as people have hard time to find out what is right or wrong, but all it matters is the direction to self explore on that matter, to have the effort, and be open minded and weight all possibilities out of it. Beyond that, there is nothing much else you can do. But we live in a world right now where there is more opportunity to cultivate that path than any before. With big data where we can do insights, neurology taking new strides of how our self behavior works, pieces of paper here and there as a manual with the possibility this is just a simulation with a bigger purpose, all we can do is connect the dots and be a good model for society not publicly, but internally, when our time ends. I think beyond that there is nothing more to care when living this world.
There are times where you want to do the short cut and avoid all this road map or you already done and is hard to get away with your current responsibilities lie on the way from what you really want to do. Once you do more action, more decisive big meaningful action, it is harder to get close to the path you want to take. So actions are quite important on what you do because they reflect and assimilate your personality of who you are and what your habits are driven by. I guess in such sense, it is important to have a plan to what contributions an individual can cultivate a world that grows mental happiness and stick to it. Then you will have a more bigger purpose in life because all your tasks you do have a bigger purpose behind than just visualizing your time on tasks with no purpose. I think thinking and taking this mindset of mental symmetry is hard to conceptualize or make it applicable in real life given how contrary and represents a minority of people who similarly think in such way. Therefore, believing it requires to create and explore your facts yourself (Perceiver mode) instead of others telling you what is right or not (Mercy mode) as a re-enforcement.
So to end the topic, we are on the age of Tumblr and Instagram. I mean pictures is going to be the biggest trend and double tapping with our phone if we like something or not. How more simple is to that compared to writing an essay that involves critical thinking? The point is just think about it. People liking your photo over a double tap is not as a significant action as someone trying to put an effort on their own experiences it has captured so far in this world. I have nothing against how these new technologies come, and I applaud simplicity, but something feels wrong if the main popular central hubs people communicate is in forms of simplicity, as that resonates me to what I have said before "That requires a lot of transition on the way we look at things not through just our eyes, but beneath our minds". If that is the last thing this age will have, then tumblr or instagram will be the last one. People are too ambitious or have too much expectations to get more content than they can absorb. Those tools are nice for exploration. But I think it would be nice people focus on a specific thing and aim it in their personal life, just like business models do. I have said general knowledge is important before, but this is just looking things at the cover of the book and never exploring the depth behind those topics which require critical thinking.
The second thing that bothers me a lot is with how technology is seen in those days. Maybe some of you have not seen it, but I have seen going in a wrong direction on how it is approached. People focus too much on the infrastructure, too much that it does not make sense. They never look at the end product of the infrastructure. The concepts of an infrastructure are the following:
- Innovating infrastructures that eliminate manual tasks by making it more abstract so people can focus more time on the content.
- Innovation and marketing follows the data on what customer needs instead of transforming users behavior in better principles.
On the first one, I think it is essential when the life of the product gets stagnated by the low productivity of rendering results. However, I do not know how to approach or feel about this. For one, if you do not catch up, competition will take over with lower costs for the same result, and that is hard to doubt out. However, its not like it will be the end of the world if we go 10 years back where such technology and libraries did not exist in the front end and people can still deliver results that meet deadlines. It is more like living financially frugally with an old technology while having a lot of resources with the new one. However, there are some dead ends with innovating technologies. You see, many innovating technologies are not mature yet to avoid any pitfalls. Lets take the example of the language Java. Java, for instance, essentially takes care of all the garbage collection without you not needing to know any abstraction behind it. C/C++ on the other hand has the options where you can control garbage collection. It is no wonder that many Java developers were hired with 0 years of experience in Java and had all their experience background behind C/C++ and did much more better than those who had more experience in programming, but all of their part experience was behind the Java language. It is of essence, that abstractions are very important, especially on a product that is not mature yet, but at some point on the future, those abstractions behind will not be important to look or consider so much except knowing the basic foundations behind it, such as assembly language. They do have an important value nonetheless, but it is hard to be in denial that they become less and less important as you just want to have an out of the box thing and nothing less.
The second thing is innovation and marketing is guided by existing data to either monopolize and expands the habits of individuals through their ecosystem or create new disruptive products that will bring a competitive advantage that they did not had before. They follow the invisible hand and where the market follows, so they become extra profitable. But nonetheless, I think the companies are not the problem, but the people's natural motivation on what drives them to create a market system like that which ignores ethics and other important matters. If there was everywhere in the world a side project that focused on making people more mentally happy instead of physically happy and create a market for that, where there is labor behind that, that would be a new age where people can think more critically on what is important and not important. Because right now, we have all the automation we need to do anything to control our environment. What is lacking now is how to plan it effectively in dire times and how more better should we be guided ourselves on using our environment to best fit ourselves.