Thought Garage

By nature, most of us hate to fail and prefer a path of least resistance. So, we plan every thing. We plan to the deepest detail possible in order to avoid any uncertainty and surprises. And will try our best to stick to that plan.

There is nothing wrong having a plan. But too much of planning will kill your creativity, because planning is quite limiting in essence. Instead, have a high level plan, like a roadmap. And leave rest of the details to the moment to reveal your creativity.

Most cases, our ‘plans’ are created based on experiences of those who didn’t have one.  There is nothing wrong in learning from others.  But don’t dwell onto too many details upfront. Remember that ‘surprises’ are what makes a life worth living for. More over, your feelings and emotions will be genuine when you don’t have a plan.

On a related note, If you want to really know a person, sail with him/her to unchartered waters. Not only each of you get to know the other person, but you will find your true self. In fact that is the essence of going on a honeymoon to a totally new place.

So, if you really want to live a life of your own, plan less.

Microsoft’s Augmented Reality in Bing Maps (Windows Live Maps). Going beyond the street view. Crowd sourced Photographs, photographs through the timeline and augmenting real time video, awesome. And if you just look up in the sky, you can all constellations in that space at that time. Wonderful.

Its a wonderful talk.  Most of our current problems can be solved just by changing our behavior instead of waiting for that great new technology.  Its not that people don’t know what is good for them, but they are not compelled to take any action. Marketing can sure help.

106,456,367,669 (Source : How Many People Ever Lived On Earth)

This number was estimated in 2002 since then we must have added another 720M people to the earth.

Current living population : 6,800,300,000 (Wikipedia)

And when it comes to density of population, India is one of the most densely populated. About 400 people per a square Kilometer. Compare it with USA’s rate of just 34 and China’s 141 to put that number in context.

(Image Source : Wikipedia )

It sounds quite alarming that 8-18 year olds on average spend about 7.5 hours a day on entertainment media (that includes cell phone, TV, Music players and computers). But considering the fact that some of those devices being an integral part of our lives (like cell phones), use of them for entertainment may be over quoted.

A national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that with technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth. 

Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week).  And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

Source : Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds

Also quoting from the survey, the same set of people surveyed say that about 55% of people are scoring B+ (mostly As or Bs + mostly As) grades in school. That definitely has something to say about how the new generation is using those gadgets.