London at Night

So yeah, I'm rather pleased with how this came out!

A picture is worth a thousand words.


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I've now uploaded the rest of the photographs that I took on this walk. So, here they are!....

Edit: I am going to keep adding night time photographs of London that I take. So in the event this post gets really long, please allow the photos to load.

Want To Succeed? Step one: Fail

This is one of my favourite quotes at the moment.

"Success can only be achieved with a kind of pioneer spirit and the repeated use of three tools: failure, introspection and courage."
- Soichiro Honda.

It sums things up so well, and particularly in my life. Well, more specifically a pattern of behaviour that many of us get in to - I know I have got myself into problems before by engaging in this. Maybe I will again, though hopefully I'll make it OK that I do....!

Basically it's when we make mistakes in life, but beat ourselves up about it, instead of cutting ourselves some slack. Comparing ourselves to others, blaming ourselves when we have hindsight about how we could have done better, how we should have done it differently are all too easy to do, but longer term are much less healthy approaches. Remember: The only thing you should be comparing is meerkats.

I won't go into details, but let me tell you I have learned the hard way how destructive it is to spend too much time criticising yourself (in a bad, non constructive way).

Don't do it. Accept we all make mistakes. In fact, allow yourself to do something essential: Let compassion for yourself reign.

You live, you learn.

Too Much Information?

Buzzing and Tweeting and Facebooking and Blogging -- And these are just the ones I use!

This modern day technological revolution of the world wide web has created a situation in which anyone with an internet connection can communicate and share enormous volumes of information. Essentially a new library has been invented and built by Homo Sapiens Inc. This library houses all of the world's information that is currently known and will share with the largest audience possible future discoveries. It is an information repository of the people, by the people, for the people.

What I often wonder about though is this; At what point does all the information become too much information? That is to say (and perhaps there's just no right or wrong about this), do we (we = all humans who have or will lay a brick in the building of the library) have a responsibility to be more or less judicious in what we share with our fellow bricklayers? Apart from where information has a legal issue (e.g. sharing indecent images of children), which should clearly not be shared (well they shouldn't even be collected in the first place!) is there a line, and if so what constitutes as "Too much information"?

My view....Ha, well I'm actually returning to writing this blog post after leaving it as a draft for a couple of weeks -- mainly because I've been busy, but also because I wanted to have a good think (for all my reader(s?) ) about what to write. Interestingly, they have changed. I began this blog post planning to put across as view that way too much is out there and far too many people are communicating too much pointless information. So, I had a disagreement with myself and I won! (which is probably the best thing about arguments with oneself - can't loose!).

So, revised is my now thoroughly thought through (bit of alliteration for you there!) view....or as I'm going to call it now, my thoroughly thought through theoretical thesis (I'm so clever aren't I!).

There is a saying "Sharing is Caring". I care about myself, I care about other humans and I care about the Earth and its place within the universe. I believe everyone else does too -- some will claim to care more than others and whether that is the case or not, everybody cares.

I also care about, and am a fan of information -- and all that information is. As a simple definition, information is the act of informing. For me, this act of informing is whenever any part of the brain experiences a basic sense of being informed. This could be it knowing it is looking at a photograph of a place or a person. Knowing that it senses a feeling on the body, or that it senses sadness or elation. Knowing that its opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian situation is X. Knowing that 2 + 2 = 4 or that the top of the Eiffel Tower is 324 meters high. There are many more examples I could put, but I hope I have explained what I mean. In my opinion, if you can become aware of it, you have been informed.

The world is a very diverse place with many people having many different views. 6,500,000,000 people, each having between 50,000,000,000 and 100,000,000,000 neurons....you do the maths on the number of possible viewpoints.

Combining these two innate quantities creates someone who believes that the sharing of all information shows that you care about the evolution of mankind.

In this previous blog post, Map-ersonality, I mentioned the volume of geospatial information people have that if shared would create a rather large and exciting map:

"...maps will inherit what I call "Map-ersonality". The ability to explore a map where I can learn not only about the physical nature of that location, but all the stories behind it, the opinions people have of it location and why these exist. This would be the beginning of mapping so much. Potentially this gives a map the amazing possibility - the possibility to hold an amount of personality and power equivalent to that of a human mind.

The land surface of planet earth is approximately 148,940,000,000,000 m2 and there are approximately 6,500,000,000 people and growing. If each person was to give their opinion - a piece of their soul to each square meter (even if it was to say it wasn't a big one), then potentially, a map would contain 9.6811 × 1023 elements. Maybe that's something to think about?"
I believe there are three states of information:

• Factual: That the Victoria Line on the London Underground is coloured light blue. Basically everything you'd find in a traditional encyclopedia such as Encyclopædia Britannica.


• Emotive: All that we experience and feel. Our experiences, interpretations and our opinions. I'll come back to this one in a minute though.


• Mindful: Everything else that we don't notice, but when we play very careful attention to it, we can see it. It is right there in front of our eyes (though it may also be psychological). This is a perfect example of being more mindful. Next time you look out of your window, or look at a photograph, what's there? What's behind the centrepiece of the picture reflecting off the glass in the top left corner?

Now, back to that "Emotive" heading. In psychology, a theory known as Personal construct theory states that "A person's unique psychological processes are channeled by the way s/he anticipates events.".

It is these experiences, each human having millions of them in their lifetime which I believe to be information -- information that I want to have access to and the choice to connect with. This links back to the original statement regarding "Sharing is caring". Think about it, all these experiences which then go onto form opinions on life. Some are big, such as whether or not it was right to invade Iraq in 2003 and some small, whether people can tolerate the taste of marmite.

This quote below, perfectly summarises for me the two primary differences between information, but actually what I personally believe in combining. The facts, and the brain's experiences and the succeeding illusions it creates.

"When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart."
- Stephen Fry (possibly quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein)

So then, what I am saying is this:

I believe in a world of sharing. Not just the ability to look at websites to view facts, see photos or find driving directions. I believe in a world where all of our experiences, opinions can be shared, dissected and put back together again using multiple opinions from people all over the world about everything there is to think.

Internet search company Google has like many companies do, a corporate mission: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.". If ever you have the opportunity to listen to a presentation by one of the senior visionariness at Google, you will hear that this is not just a random motto thought up by the company's marketing department. It is the reason the company exists and first came the mission and then the company and its project. I personally find this very appealing - all the world's information.

So if my notion of a society in which we all make an effort to constantly share our experiences and opinions to enhance the human mind had a mission statement, it would be the following:

"to organize the world's neurons and make them universally interconnected."
That is to say, all the neurons which make up who I am, Phil with every other neuron of every other human. If we do this, we could have a complete human. Every thought that could be had, shared in this global information repository of the people, by the people, for the people. Perhaps some of the greatest discoveries yet to be made can come into existence by the collaboration of all the world's neurons, universally interconnected.

Lastly, I would say this. All these experiences whilst I want all of them to be shared must be better organized. I think we can cut ourselves some slack given this massive evolutionary change. We've still a way to go to sift out (not sift out, just better place) experiences which may give me nightmares (advisory). We can start building more shelves once more information has come in.

So, to end. Send me your experiences and if you like, I'll send you mine. Then together we will know more. I will care for you, you will care for me, we will continue to involve, to evolve, and to solve.

But hey, that's just what I think based on my experiences!

Edit: Some people have contacted me posing the question "what if people don't want to give information, or feel uncomfortable doing so, or could it be dangerous to give people information about yourself (I don't think they meant PIN number, but more personal information about life experiences). This was my response:

Well one theory is that those who don't like to share their thoughts could explain why they feel uncomfortable - not to be judged, but the explanation of what experiences have led them to not wish to share, is itself offering up some neuron interconnectivity. Sometimes sharing might be not be sharing - the NOT sharing (as in what creates a person who with complete entitlement choose not to share) is the shared element.