Fake Identities In Actuallity

While on my mission I saw people get baptized and then proceed to miss church because their gild was fighting a major battle.  Eventually they stopped coming all together.  I've seen the pernicious effects of addicting online gaming behavior with several people in my life.  Gaming doesn't attract me so it's easy for me to refrain from it, so I've needed to put forth effort to understand those overcome by its addictive nature.  On the flip side we have social norms and certain cultures that prevent people from expressing their true identity when they are dying to.  We are so quick to condemn those living a fake identity in cyberspace and never think that maybe we are causing those around us to actually live a fake identity.  It looks like people need to put forth some effort to understand these people's true identities.

Family History Still For Old People

Previously family history work took a lot of time, hence old people dominated the field.  But in recent years the time needed to accomplish any family history work has greatly been diminished, though people's mindset hasn't changed much.  Sadly, the time I was most exited about doing family history work was when I was a missionary teaching weekly classes about it.  This is sad because as a full-time missionary we couldn't do family history work.  But now I can!  Yet I don't.  Why?  Well I have an aunt or two that is crazy about family history work and it's gotten to the point that I once again must spend a lot of time to find out anymore information about my ancestors.  There is still plenty of work to do like indexing, but general indexing doesn't bring the same kind of thrill as researching your own ancestors.  I know I don't stand alone here.  In my mind I can't help but thing that family history is still for old people.  Will family history ever be as thrilling to me as it has been to my aunts?

Here Comes Me!

    "It wasn't until the student's writing assignments became blog posts did the quality of their writing increase dramatically" -Dr. K..
    People, writing music, recording music, making videos, and dancing.  These are all things I love.  The fact that the time and effort I put into the things have a guaranteed audience greatly enhances my desire to continually stay involved in such activities.  What would I be doing at my age had I been born 10 years prior?
    Networking has brought about justice.  Before now a person had to get past the men wearing suites who "know what people like" in order to do what they love.  But now that unofficial monopoly can be bypassed, giving opportunity to anyone that wants to be seen and heard.  Anyone can share anything they feel anytime!  Knowledge about anything is at everyone's fingertips, something the world didn't see coming.
    Does having all information at everyone's fingertips introduce danger into society?  I don't think so.  Within modern day networking we are seeing the formation of several connected graphs incomprehensibly large in size.  The connections being added to these networks cause a true exponential growth in complexity.  These complexities are what's protecting us; they're what make our passwords and other forms of encryption safe.  Social media, and other cyber-networks, simulate a non-deterministic Turing machine, a device that is believed impossible to exist.  But such complex data structures can not efficiently be processed, or traversed, in a reasonable amount of time even by the world's fastest super computers.  Such networks are only as dangerous as are the methods used to traverse them which is significantly lowers the chance of information being used to resurrect Big Brother.
    Of course networking has brought about justice assuming people are truly free to express themselves.  What about China?  The largest population simply being restricted from the planet's greatest sources of information:  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, Google, etc..  This is only damaging.  True dead-weight-loss.

Symbolizing China'a Great Firewall

    Having information at our fingertips is a new concept and the potential it gives the human race has not even come close to being breached.  We are now living in a modern-day Renaissance.  Previous obstacles that prohibited so much creative expression have disseminated, leaving behind doors of opportunity that can be opened by a person's effort alone.  So how are you taking advantage of what is no longer holding you down?