Well, I finally registered the domain for this blog. So last night I moved the entire thing to the new location. I imported all the posts from this blog into the new one. Only to find that the picture sizes I had here, didn't work on the them I am using for the new one. So I also resized all of the pictures on the new blog. So if you are one of my regular readers, please update your bookmarks and links to reflect the new location. http://www.TheOnlineRant.com
I've been a little depressed lately. And the reason is that I feel stuck. My entire life feels like it is stuck in between being a mature adult, and being an immature young adult who is still trying to find out what to do with his life. And being stuck in between, I don't feel like I can really relate to the people around me who are in one phase or another.
On one side, I have my mature friends. The people I graduated from college with. I don't really feel like they are more mature than me, but at the same time I do. The problem is that they are all in a different place in their lives than I am. Most of them are married and well established in their careers. A lot of them even have multiple kids. Whereas I'm not married, and I don't feel all that well established in my career. While they are all building their families and advancing in their chosen careers, I'm still single and still at the bottom of my chosen career path. And as we all get older, I find that I have less and less in common with most of them.
On the other side I have my relatively immature friends. They are mostly younger than me, and haven't reached the point where they are really working on their future. Mostly they are single and for the most part are still in college. They live from paycheck to paycheck and don't really worry too much about what they are going to do with their lives. They aren't really immature, they just haven't moved past the college phase yet. And the truth is that I really don't relate to them either. Because I am past the college phase.
My problem is that I'm stuck in between. I'm past the friends who are still in school and are still finding out who they are, but I'm behind the ones who are out their building their lives. And I fell like I'm stuck. I'm too old to go back, but I somehow can't go forward either. It's like my life is in a permanent holding pattern. Since I graduated from college, about 4 years ago, almost nothing has changed in my life. Which is depressing. Mainly because I have no idea what I did wrong to be left behind, and I find I have less and less in common with everyone around me. So, I'm feeling a little down right now.
There is an old hacker saying, "Information wants to be free." Now when I say old, I don't mean old in real world time. I mean old in Internet time. Where if it is older than a year, it is considered ancient. The saying is kind of a cliche, but lately I've been wondering if there might be some truth to it.
The question is, does information naturally gravitate towards freedom? In an information based society like ours, the above question is very relevant and rather important. For thousands of years governments, religions, and businesses/trade guilds have used control of information to protect their power and position.
These days all of that is changing. As the information age comes into full swing, control of information is getting harder to maintain. And suppressing unwanted information is nearly impossible. The best anyone can hope for, is that the unwanted info will be forgotten. But you can't remove it or hide it. So that information will always be there.
Every government, business, and religious group that relies on information control is feeling the effects today. Repressive, and even democratic, governments around the world that try to hide their policies and actions are finding that it is nearly impossible. New scandals and abuses are daily leaked to the Internet and spread far beyond the reach of the governments involved. Religious groups like the Scientologists that rely on secret knowledge for elites, are fighting a losing battle to keep that knowledge off of the Internet. Business models that rely on a monopoly of information are all feeling the pressure of competition from non-experts. Copyrights and patents are becoming increasingly hard to protect.
Basically, if it is information, it will end up on the internet at some point. And once it does, it will be there forever. I'm not sure what that really means for our society. I know that it means a lot of change for a lot of different areas and people.
By the way, here are a couple of video's that illustrate the point.
