Distorted Vision

The Perfect Knowledge and The Unromantic World

There was a time when soda got it's name from 'cocaine' and heroin was a miracle cure. There was a time when food wasn't nutritional facts and calories, but just food. There was a time when superpowers competed in a race for the Moon, and one of them could actually trick the other into beliving it had plans to place lasers in orbit and dominate space. Finally, there was a time when knowledge had to be searched for in libraries, and letters were writted on paper and sent in envelopes. 

Today, Coca-Cola no longer has coca leaf extract, but is considered a poison nonetheless. Food has become nutrition, and people care about labels as much as they care about the taste. The Moon program was deemed irrationally expensive and eventually got scrapped, while Reagan's Star Wars are a fairytale the likes of which could never be believed.  Knowledge on any subject is abundant and universal, giving every person with an internet connection the decision power few had in the past.

The knowledge we acquired has given us so much; yet we shouldn't forget how much it took in return.

 

Robots among us

Sometimes when I wake up after a late night or simply find no breakfast foods in the fridge (happens to young single men a lot), I stop by McDonalds for a quick bite - I'm somewhat impartial to Egg McMuffins. And almost every time I'm there the exchange with the cashier goes something like this:

- I would like Meal Number 10 with coffee substituted for orange juice.

- Would you like milk & sugar in your coffee?

I pronounce the words SUBSTITUTED and ORANGE JUICE very clearly; the staff at this particular downtown Miami location seems to have no issues with unerstanding English. Yet offering milk & sugar is so engrained in these people's minds, they can't stop doing it despite hearing my request.

I'm uncomfortable with the though of living in a society full of robots. And I'm really scared that one day when I tell a very special someone about my feelings, their response will be

'Would you like milk & sugar in your coffee?'

 

The Economist Wrong About OLPC in Peru

In a recent article The Economist magazine reviewed the results of an Inter-American Development Bank report on the OLPC project in Peru. While known for its insightful writing, in this case The Economist missed the point. While correctly pointing out that math and language skills showed no noticeable improvement after the children started using their XO laptop, The Economist missed the most important point. In Peru children showed a marked improvement in cognitive skills.

via sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com

The Economist is very good with numbers, but fails to analyze something for which there is no scale.

Partners

It is very difficult to find a romantic partner that you'd share your life with. But it's so much more difficult to find a partner you would start a business with.

Origins

When the Hubble telescope was launched in 1990, scientists here on earth soon discovered that its mirror had a defect. Although the defect was less than 4% the diameter of a human hair, it significantly distorted the telescope's vision, forcing NASA to launch a costly repair mission three years later.

The distortion to my vision of the world has a different nature and certainly bears much less scientific signifcance. Nonetheless, it creates a different view - one that I've recently found to be of interest to some.

I was born in the Belorusssian Soviet Socialistic Republic in early 1986, 2 months before the Chernobyl disaster happened just 250 miles away from my home city. When the USSR crumbled in August of 1991 and national television broadcasted tanks in central Moscow, I was too young to understand the magnitude of the event;  yet I clearly remember how on my very first day of school, September 1st of that year, the teacher made everyone cross out the phrase 'My Motherland is Soviet Union' from the textbook and write 'My motherland is Belarus' instead. I travelled abroad with a Soviet passport until the age of 13 - just because there was nothing to replace it with. It took even longer for people's mentality to change. In fact, for many it never did. The country itself remains a caricature of the Communist past - a point well illustrated by the recent currency devaluation and 1991-style food shortages.

I've lived abroad for 8 years now, 6 of them in the United States. This experience has profoundly affected my vision of the world, but the vision remains permanently distorted by echoes of the past, leading to a somewhat different perspective on the world's events. I will attempt to share my perspective in this journal.