Thoughts from a life hacker

A couple of days ago, I was having a discussion with an acquaintance about the drive to succeed, and the passion to overcome. My belief is that humans, as long as they have the will to succeed, will inevitably overcome any and all challenges that they face on their way to achieving their goals. Having studied martial arts for a large part of my youth taught me that very fact. I was never the strongest, or the fastest, or the most nimble, or... the list goes on and on, but it's because of my perseverance that I succeeded in achieving what I can now call my accomplishments.

Saturday, an individual who has a blog through Planet SysAdmin made a very interesting post that pertains to this conversation, and my discovering the entry was of pure coincidence. In essence, the author (sysadmin1138 ) described how they had read an excerpt from a book which addressed the fact that for anyone to become good at any task or activity, that individual needs to practice for at least 10,000 hours. This very fact strengthens my own personal argument that anyone with the right drive can succeed at whatever they put their mind to.

My acquaintance's argument was based on a hypothetical (but clearly true) story of an underprivileged child. Living in an environment where one or neither parent (or legal guardian for that matter) has taken responsibility for the upbringing of the child suppresses the drive for that young individual to want to persevere as he grows and matures. What's left? A jaded citizen of society looking out for themselves by taking advantage of others, simply to survive day by day. The argument continued in that this young individual neither has hope, or the ability to thrive outside of his immediate environment. My question was why?

Granted, I never had to survive in a situation like the one described above, and that I had the resources and the support to thrive. With that said, I'm afraid that as society continues into the future, the sense of entitlement will grow stronger. Individuals (and not only those in poor living conditions) will expect more for less, which will ultimately decrease the level of individual and/or collective drive to succeed.

Additionally, our discussion touched upon moments of inspiration that a privileged individual experiences in their lifetime. Again, our opinions differed in that I believe as we go through our life, we have a constant stream of inspiration to draw on, where at any point, one idea can spur a life altering event. The opposing idea was that only when we are students at an academic university would that moment be present and once it passed, it would be gone forever.

I suppose, as I read through this post, this is the proverbial argument of realism and idealism. As an idealist, inspiration is at the crux of my daily life, and whether or not I act upon it is simply a matter of drive and desire. My belief is that anyone with an idea, whether they live with the worst or best that life has to offer, can see to the realization of that idea, as long as they have the drive, and the perseverance to see it through.

"The state of being calm, peaceful, or tranquil"

The human mind is an incredible machine. The conscious mind is the "soul" of the machine. What provides the machine a soul? How is it established? Will one day a non-biological machine have a soul?

As I sit here, reveling in the approaching season of fall, I've finally come to the realization that my best work is done in the upcoming months, at this hour, when the world is still, and the weather is conducive to thought. Over the summer, time and time again, I sat blankly, void of energy and initiative to pursue, unaware that the heat was the silent leach that I could not overcome. Tonight, I find solace in the stirrings of fall.

Last week, I was in Bangalore, India. I never thought that I'd have the opportunity (so early in my career) to visit the place that I had heard so much about over the years. Between the books by Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat, and Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters, I had enough of an idea of what was going on in India (or so I thought), and figured that my expectations of the country would fit reality; my perspective couldn't have been further from the truth.

India... especially Bangalore, can most certainly be defined as a third world country that's overcoming obstacles dealing with infrastructure, and the simple basics of running water, and electricity. They have the manpower, but it's clear that the government wasn't expecting the influx of private investment in the workforce over the past 10-15 years. After speaking with the locals, it was clear that corruption runs rabid in India, and that the majority of the wealth is in Delhi. The further cities are from the capital, the less funding they see toward building/repairing roadways, and providing adequate services for their people, nevermind the visiting tourists, and business people.

I stayed in one of the nicer hotels in Bangalore, and it honestly was incredible. The amenities they provided, the variety in dining, and the room accommodations were on par with the finer visitor residences in Europe. However, as soon as you push the curtains aside to the window, you realize that you're quite far from Europe. Through the smog, you realize that the city is jam packed with stacks of residential homes, that are in dire need of repair, surrounded by roads that are filled past the brim with cars, motorbikes, cycles, and people. One of the drivers mentioned, on the way from the airport to the hotel that Bangalore used to be a 10 minute city, and in the past 5 years, it has become the hour to two hour city. With the influx of people, tourists, and investors, the city is overrun with traffic, making it incredibly difficult to maneuver from one place to the next. I was able to shoot some video of a commute, and I was shocked that there weren't more accidents.

After visually taking off the covers of Bangalore, I realized that the people were peaceful, and hard working. They're ultimate goal in life is to make it through the day without getting killed, and spending time with their family and loved ones. Their food is incredibly elaborate, and they have a wonderful array of spices to liven up their food. It was my first experience with Indian food, and I enjoyed it quite a bit! I was taught the difference between North and Southern Indian cuisines, and thoroughly enjoyed both.

Outside of Bangalore, a city exists by the name of the Electronic City. The city employs a large majority of the population that lives in Bangalore; between three of the largest technology corporations in the area, they employ over 200k people. Those are employees that come and go out of the city everyday. The commute from the hotel to the city was about an hour and a half because of traffic. They bring people in and out via coach buses, modified to fit the incredible demand. Every aspect has been modified, and taken advantage of to deal with the ridiculous population growth, and influx from other regions in India.

Overall, taking this trip to India was definitely eye opening, and I now understand why, and how the investment that international companies are putting into India are making a different in the country, and to the people, both positive, and negative.

Alexander Gelfand wrote this article regarding a company in Montreal, called Credentica whose goal is to improve consumer's security of their private information during transactions, so that their identities can be protected from those who aggregate data to rebuild identities for a variety of illegitimate uses. The technique they use is called Multi-Party computation.

Basically, it provides a mechanism so that two subjects, who want to know a bit of information about each other without revealing the same information about themselves. The example given in the Wikipedia entry is from the paper where the technique was proposed in 1982, of how Alice and Bob, who are both millionaires, and want to know who is richer without having to divulge the value of their wealth.

In this day and age, solutions like this could be leveraged in a variety of cases, where a user would benefit from having their own personal information released into the wild through each and every transaction they make. For example, last night, I checked into a hotel in Bangalore, India. The representative at the front desk asked for my full name, my credit card, and passport for the check-in process. My assumption is that this data is required by the country (for identification purposes), and obviously, for payment to the hotel. What if, using the technology provided by Credentica, the hotel could verify my identity, and trust my method of payment, without ever having to know more than my name. Sounds like a cure all to me.

Companies like LifeLock have been guaranteeing against identity theft, by working with the credit bureaus to set up fraud alerts, and to make sure that you stay up to date with your own credit report. However, recently, I heard that Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock, who advertises using his own social security number was a victim of identity theft himself, even though his identity was protected by his own technology. RSA, the Security Division of EMC bought a company by the name of Verid in June of last year, to add a service based identity verification product to their growing portfolio of consumer identity solutions. Verid uses data that's aggregated through public record to verify a user's identity during a transaction. Security companies worldwide certainly have their ears to the consumer security grindstone, and are doing everything in their power, organically, and through the acquisition of technology to make it available to everyone.

With state, and federal governments worldwide working toward a national identification program, it will be interesting to see what technologies private security companies provide to protect personal information.

I suppose that even in the world of technology, locks are still only for the honest people. Thieves will always find a way to get around what has been put in place to prevent them from what they want...

The other day, I was on the treadmill, finishing up my workout with a brisk walk, when I glanced up at the window facing out, and caught my own reflection. I've never been much of a fan of mirrors, and would rather do something else than stand in front of one, admiring myself (narcissists have to check themselves in a mirror consistently throughout the day?!). For the first time, I realized how much I resemble my parents, specifically my father. Growing up, people who you meet, that know your parents, always make bold statements about which, you resemble the most. As I aged, and grew into adolescence, depending on the person, they'd match me to my dad or my mom, interchangeably; I could never get a consistent answer. To be honest, I could never really decide who I looked most like either...

However, that day on the treadmill, I could've sworn that I was staring at my dad, and it was the strangest feeling, but definitely comforting, knowing that this experience was the truest form of genealogy. Even though I was entertained by the geek factor of genetics, and why offspring have traits of their parents, I was somewhat disappointed.

Ever since graduating from university, the stress of my job has most certainly taken a toll on my body, and in that reflection, I could tell what it had done. Adding to it, the variety of non-work related stresses hasn't made my aging any better or easier. However, I was on that treadmill for a reason, and it was to defeat (or even to suppress) the stresses of the day, preventing them from adding more age and cynicism to my own visage.

Granted, there will always be the types of people that will leverage their enormous bank rolls (or the lack thereof) to take the easy way out in preventing significant aging in a short amount of time. Is a peaceful, relaxing, and ultimately simple life worth spending money on? What if, instead of spending money to achieve it, we simplified our lives, across every aspect. Would that make more of a difference in how an individual ages than funneling money into an unlimited array of miracle products, and cures that are only covering up what is still in process? We can't defy age; we can only accept it, and take care of ourselves, by leading lives that are as simple and stress free as possible.

Today, Mitt Romney decided to suspend his campaign for the White House. The speech he made resonated with conservatives, liberals, and independents alike across the nation, and I honestly feel that the current condition of the US government is horrid. Never, in the history of presidential elections has there been a situation where members from both parties have the same opinion on the majority of the issues facing the country at the time. Today, candidates from both sides, address the country in their various debates and speeches not as potential representatives of the party that they belong to, but as politicians who simply wish to become elected to the presidency of, what I believe, used to be the greatest nation in the world. My eye fell upon this book the other day, written by T.R. Reid. The title alone warrants reading the book... United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the end of American Supremacy. After all the blood, sweat, and energy that those who made this country into what it is today, and the decision to create a government that represents two different parties, we have succumbed to uniformity, and indecisiveness, ultimately giving us a situation where candidates from both parties, in this election, can be considered identical.

What happened over time to the separation of perspectives, views, and the purpose of having two parties? Have we become so numb to the difference, or caught up in scandals that prevents us from addressing real issues?

Personally, even if Romney continued to run toward the Republican convention, without suspending his candidacy, I'm not sure if I would've voted for him. Between him and the rest of the candidates, I felt like he held views that were more in inline with the Republican party. However, I'm not so sure that even they were inline enough. Per his speach, I believe that the Republican party has to reconnect with its history, and reestablish its core values, so that a candidate, fitting of the party can be chosen for the election in 2012.

I caught this article on engadget through an RSS feed today, and was seriously impressed. Research in artificial limb technology has taken an enormous step forward by the same individual that thought the Segway was going to revolutionize transportation around the world, Dean Kamen. He has a couple of fantastic prototypes, that are being tested by those that had limbs, but lost them through an accident (as you can see by the video that's included in the article link). Granted, right now, the technology provides mobility through the use of micro buttons on a different limb, but eventually, connections to live nerves that once used to control a limb can be possible.

I watched the video a couple of times, and couldn't believe the likeness the arm had to one that was generated for the Terminator films. To think that eventually, not only will those who have been in an unfortunate accident be able to have use of limbs again, but technology like this can provide a variety of different uses for the military, and even for those who work jobs that require manual/physical labor providing additional strength, and ability to perform beyond any human would be able to.

In an earlier post, I mentioned the progression to a world where technology is intertwined with humanity, and the repercussions of the gradual emergence of this type of innovation. Will humans as we know them be obsoleted by the evolution of technology that combines eletronics, and hardware with organic material? On one front, its an incredible breakthrough, and the sci-fi enthusiast in me desires to see it move forward, but on the other hand, as a homo sapien, do I want us to pursue a technology that will result in our own demise?

Lately, innovation in this type of technology has increased and grown exponentially. Do you want it to continue? Or would you place limits on the innovation, much like what's being done in the medical industry with stem cell research (for instance)?