In Line | Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California | Jun 2007

I am full of half-thoughts… some I let loose on Twitter, many are stored up and eventually fleshed out into full thoughts and posts, but some languish as “drafts”, unfinished for weeks, months and years. In an effort to clean out my mind’s clutter, I’ll throw out some unordered thoughts.

• On the picture above: it came on one of the greatest hikes I’ve taken, but it was a bad day for one hiker.
• On Generation X: Generation X is getting screwed. So far my generation has suffered from a persistent mistiming between our life events and world events; cultural and technological shifts have been severely misaligned with my generation’s ability to take advantage of them. Compounding the problem is our crush between the Boomers and Generation Y. It’s still possible for the great to be great, but it makes it harder for the middle to swim against the tide. Generation X was behind the curve at the start and might never catch up.
• On economic turbulence and attention: So many people paying attention to current economic times, applying critical thought trying to understand what is going on. Where was all this attention focused before? Why did it only show up now?
• On data: Did we simply create too much data to the point where it was impossible for us to understand everything? We already see signs of this in the suboptimal cultural coping mechanisms we adopt to mask our declining ability to process all the information and communication we create each day. We’re only starting to see the parallel in our business and economic structures.
• A friend: “The old ways of losing money worked well enough – why did we have to invent new ways?”
• Why do I spend my time doing what I do? “Getting paid isn’t worth it.”