Judgmental culture and new media technologies

The events surrounding what happened to Shirley Sharrod has taught us so many lessons about our actions in the world that anyone can write a so-called "news". Some of these lessons are written by the NYTimes Op-Ed contributor, Van Jones:

"The only solution is for Americans to adjust our culture over time to our new media technologies. The information system gives us more data than ever before, faster than ever before. But we don’t yet have the wisdom in place to help us deal with it."

"In time, we will. The worst of the partisans will get their comeuppance and become cautionary tales for others. Public leaders will learn to be more transparent. We will teach our children not to rush to judgment. Technology will evolve to better expose fakers."

"We have to understand that no one can be defined by a single photograph, open-mike gaffe or sound bite. Not even our greatest leaders could have survived if they had to be taken to task for every poorly conceived utterance or youthful demonstration of immature political views. When it comes to politics in the age of Facebook, the killer app to stop the “gotcha” bullies won’t be a technological one — it will be a wiser, more forgiving culture."

Purpose of life

The purpose of life is not to be happy -- but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

Leo Rosten, 1908 - 1997

I got this quote from kiwanja.net. This life meaning makes a lot of sense. But I still struggle with the question of "what is the meaning of living?"

Quotes about Afghanistan War

Here is an interesting quote from the NYtimes about what over 90,000+ classified documents reveal:

"The debate in Washington has focused on counterinsurgency and the big picture, but these documents show that complex policies are not going to work because no one knows how to implement them on the ground."

"The leak reveals what war is — a confused and dirty exercise where goals can be quickly lost in the confusion of an actual fight."

These quotes also apply to other situations such as an implementation of a new information system, a new interdisciplinary initiative, an enterprise architecture strategy, etc.