Thinking in dimensions

I was reading The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thom Friedman, it's a pretty good book, but could be half the distance. Anyhoo, i was thinking that one of the things i really liked about the book is that he talked about 'thinking in dimensions'. What he meant by that was thinking along differen 'filters' for international events. Of course, especially before the end of the cold war, lots of people thought that the political dimension reigned supreme. Nowadays it's the economic and technological views that predominate analysis. With the war in Iraq the supreme dimension we think about is cultural (religious) with a heavy dose of economics (oil) and those countries lack of technological sophistication.

So i forget the other dimensions, i'll put them in later, but for now let me list them:
1. political (democracy/dictatorship)
2. cultural (religion/philosophy)
3. economic (capitalist/socialist)
4.
and a few others, he names six. Unfortunately i lent this book to a friend going to india so i won't be able to figure out the other dimensions.

In a related note, my dad is thinking about writing another book about my family's history. And since he's intelligent he first flushed out the main arguments he wanted to convey in this book. He said that he wanted to analyze economics, religion, family and sex (of course race), and he's also going to talk about these topics through the lenses of the 'moral elevation' happening after the Great Awakening (one of the feverish Christianization periods that the US went through) on the topics of race, class, gender and something else.

Don't you hate when you remember most of something? I did it twice in this one post. You can be mad at me, and blame me for your next four mistakes because i threw your 'energy' off. til nex time

The future history of google

I was talking to a fellow "futurist" and was telling him that the future of information really is Google, and the applications people develop for it really. I was telling him that someone is going to write a program that indexes historical information to google's map program. So when you research Thomas Jefferson, google will have a site that tracks thomas jefferson's travels through Europe, across America and so forth. This wouldn't just be any map, it'll be a historical map that accurately reflected the size and shape of cities back then. This'll be even cooler because some geek would create a program that made 3D models of the buildings, so you could do a virtual walk-through.

Then there's the question of historical debates, for instance, what ethnicity were the Harappans (Indus valley) or even the Ancient Egyptians (Kemet) for that matter. I guess fury would arise if anyone modeled Muhummad as Islam allows no images of their Prophet. And what would happen if someone created a Jesus with lambs wool hair and black feet!

I think for this we would need to create choice-points and explanatory tangents to educate the explorers of the past. This would be in the form of some floating symbol that is clickable or something like that.

New book i want to write

I want to write another book (again). It'll be called "Distinctions of a Black Man". It's a pun. It isn't anything like the movied 'distinguished gentleman' with eddie murphy. It isn't even a book about black men. Rather it is about how black men think. It lists a couple polarities/categories along which black men (in my opinion) parse and judge the world. let me clue you in to a few topics:

Adult vs Children (responsibility)
Black people vs Niggaz (morality & ambition)
Power vs Force (sovereignty)
Man/Woman vs Masculine/Feminine
Success vs Failure (winning with the hand you were dealt)
War vs Violence (read the book! or the next paragraph)

There may be up to 50, i just gotta think them up. The thought for this book came about when i was thinking about how i literally love warriorship literature, but hate the violence in my community. So i got to thinking about the difference between a warrior and a thug. What differentiates them are the ultimate aims for which they apply force.

Ipod, Mac and Dell

I got another ipod, the 30gig video. It's amazing. Problem . . . i'm mostly using my Girl's laptop for music. We have separate user names, so we have duplicate music, that sucks. . . especially on the 40gig harddrive, (really two drives, the one of which is getting full!). If you have an Ipod, you know the trials and tribulations of figuring out what to do with it, how to organize this and so forth. I think the greatest feature of the ipod is the smart playlists.

I think the ipod is the single greatest invention that has the potential to cause world happines. I mean, think about it. A personal soundtrack to your life! It helps you carry around all of your favorite songs, even videos and personal information. Pretty soon it'll be a pda/phone too. Imagine a 60gig phone running macware!

And that puts me to another point. I was arguing with my dad about Mac and Windows. We differ on a big point. He thinks that Mac's competitor is Windows. I say that Mac's competitors are Dell, HP and the machines. People love the mac software, but aren't sure about the computer. With all the differentiation between the ram, harddrives, processors and such, Mac remains a mystery to most people. When we can run Mac software on a PC, That's what has Paul Allen and Bill Gates worried. . . to hell with linux. Linux has a reputation for geekdom and servers and data-intensive stuff, not graphical aesthetics for the hobby-ing user (i.e. non-programmer).

i'm ready

The other day i had an original thought. It was "i think i'm ready to start the revolution". Great, but what revolution? I dunno. If you do, drop me a note or something, i need help with ideas where to start. Currently i'm thinking about focusing on the Black Family.

A few weeks ago i was talking to someone and told them that there's a difference between our ideal family, and our actual family. Politicians say things like 'family values' and all kinds of abstract slogans. But if we really think about it, we wouldn't want everyone in the world to have the type of family or families that we have. All families have problems, no doubt. But the question may not be how do we eliminate the problems, but what does a healthy family look like?

In psychology, they have the DSM4, 5 or some other version. It's a mini-encyclopedia of how people are disfunctional. Of course, somewhere theres probably a version of that for families. But that's looking in the wrong direction. It's like reviewing all the statistics about Black America. They in themselves are simply descriptions of the problem, and those statistics point to what we don't want, but they don't tell us how to get there from here.

Looking in a direction that'll have hopefully a more positive impact, i'll say that we have to create a model of a healthy family. We have to research what works in existing healthy families, and teach that to dys-functional families. Simply saying 'don't do this' won't help. I do kinda like the presence of Dr. Phil and the Nanny on TV. That teaches those other losers that really should be on Jerry how to get their stuff together. But when i watch the shows, i find that some of the stuff i see there (good intentions but bad execution) are present in my own family. So i guess i need to find a healthy family and figure out what they're doing.

So far i've got a few clues. I'll just rattle them off and add to them later, or make you read up on them yourself. Suzette Elgin in the gentle art of verbal self-defense (series). Virginia Satir in her peoplemaking and new peoplemaking books. And Steven Covey with his family book- admitedly, i only read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and only skimmed through 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, but if what i read was any indication of the full book, then he's on target.

Perhaps the most important thing on a practical level is to figure out how to have couples and families discuss money in a non-confrontational way. Money may or may not be the root of ALL evil, but it does some serious damage on marriage. So part of the plan is to get people to look at their finances (and their fiances) with a fine-toothed comb.

On a more philosophical level, we also have to create a healthy portrait of an individual in the context of a family. . . how he or she could operate that assists the family in its development whether as a spouse, child or parent. That being said, i think the second most generous thing a person can do for a child is to love that child's parent(s), the first of course being to love the child.

So that's it, describing how healthy families operate on both a practial and philosophical level, and helping families get their finances right would be the backbone of any revolution i'm a part of. Game?